•UNION IN ETERNITY

W. ROBERTSON NICOL

LIBRARY

tffe OloUege

TORONTO

Shelf No. JE>T

Register No.....\ 7l Ci..(*.0

REUNION IN ETERNITY

WORKS BY THE REV.

SIR W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, LL.D.

PRAYER IN WAR TIME. 2/6 net.

THE ROUND OF THE CLOCK. With Illustrations by

GEORGE MORROW. 6/- net.
SUNDAY EVENING. Fifty-two Sermons for Home

Reading. 2/6 net.
IAN MACLAREN. The Life of the Rev. John Watson,

D.D. With Portrait. FIFTH EDITION. 6/- net.
THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION. Christ and

Recent Criticism. TENTH THOUSAND. 3/6 ; Purple

leather, 2/6 net ; Purple cloth, 2/- net.
THE GARDEN OF NUTS. Mystical Expositions. With

an Essay on Christian Mysticism. SECOND EDITION.

3/6 net.
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. Sermons preached on

Special Occasions. 2/6 net.
THE SEVEN WORDS FROM THE CROSS. FIFTH

EDITION. Cloth, I/- net.
A BOOKMAN'S LETTERS. FIFTH EDITION. Cloth,

4/6 net.
THE DIFFERENCE CHRIST IS MAKING. Cloth,

II- net.
MY FATHER. An Aberdeenshire Minister, 1812-1891.

With Portraits. SECOND EDITION. 2/- net.
THE LAMB OF GOD. Expositions in the Writings of

St. John. FOURTH EDITION. Purple cloth, 2/- net ;

Purple leather, 2/6 net.
THE RETURN TO THE CROSS. NEW EDITION.

Purple cloth, 2/- net ; Purple leather, 2/6 net.
TEN-MINUTE SERMONS. NEW EDITION. Purple

cloth, 2/- net ; Purple leather, 2/6 net.
THE PROBLEM OF EDWIN DROOD. A Study in the

Method of Dickens. SECOND EDITION. Cloth, 3/6 net.
THE KEY OF THE GRAVE. EIGHTH EDITION. 2/6 net.
JAMES MACDONELL. SECOND EDITION. 6/- net.

By CLAUDIUS CLEAR.

LETTERS ON LIFE. EIGHTH EDITION. 1/6 net.
THE DAY BOOK OF CLAUDIUS CLEAR. THIRD
EDITION. 1/6 net.

LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON

REUNION IN ETERNITY

BY

W. ROBERTSON NICOLL

if 5 1 79 6,35 "•

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

MB 2

TO

LADY ADAM SMITH

IN MEMORY AND HOPE

PREFACE

THE literature on Reunion in Eternity, to which
this little book is a humble contribution, is exceed
ingly meagre. There is perhaps not much public
instruction on the subject, yet the theme has never
drawn so many solicitous hearts as it draws to-day.
There are many who think of little else. They
count the hours and the days, the down-sittings
and the uprisings, that are between them and the
great restoration.

The matter of this book is neither systematic nor
controversial, and I may state in a few words the
main conclusions. They are :

1. That faithful souls pass in dying to the

immediate presence of Jesus Christ.

2. That they are, as Bishop Gore says, ' cleansed

and enlightened and perfected.'

3. That they are carried into the heart of their

desire in immediate reunion with their
beloved who have gone before.

viii Reunion in Eternity

4. That they wait in peace for the Second Advent,
the Resurrection, the Judgment.

My warmest thanks are due to the friends who
have helped me in the preparation of this volume.
In particular, my thanks are due to my friend and
colleague, Miss Jane T. Stoddart, who has written
the chapters on ' Dante and Reunion ' and 4 The
Teaching of Luther and Melanchthon,' and has
supplied many of the extracts here given. For
the help afforded in this department by my accom
plished friend, Professor James Moffatt, I am most
grateful, and I have to thank very warmly the
distinguished authors who have written me the
letters which are printed in the Appendix —
Professor A. S. Peake, D.D., of the University of
Manchester ; Dr. T. E. Page, of Charterhouse ;
Canon William Barry, D.D. ; and Mr. Arthur
E. Waite.

HAMPSTEAD, October 1918.

CONTENTS

PART I

ESSAYS ON REUNION
I

PAGE

< IN CHRIST REDEEMED, IN CHRIST RESTORED ' 1

II
IMMORTALITY WITHOUT GOD 10

III
' LIFE IN GOD, AND UNION THERE ' 19

IV
THE CHILDREN OF THE RESURRECTION 27

V
RENUNCIATION AND REUNION . 34

VI
'THEY WITHOUT US' 40

VII

BETWEEN BEREAVEMENT AND REUNION 47

b

Reunion in Eternity

VIII

PAGE

THE REUNION OF SOULS : TENNYSON 64

IX
MORNWARD : THE REUNION OF SOULS . . 62

X

'LOVE BADE ME WELCOME' 71

XI
DANTE AND REUNION . .78

XII
TEACHING OF LUTHER AND MELANCHTHON . 97

PART II

TESTIMONIES ON REUNION
EARTHLY RELATIONSHIPS

I
THE FAMILY . .... Ill

II
PARENTS AND CHILDREN . . . .120

III
CHILDREN AND PARENTS 143

Contents xi

IV

PAGE

BROTHERS AND SISTERS 161

LOVERS . . . .168

VI
HUSBAND AND WIFE ... .178

VII

FRIENDS-
PART I. TEACHERS AND GREAT ONES . .211
PART II. PERSONAL FRIENDS . 211)

MISCELLANEOUS TESTIMONIES FROM HISTORY
AND LITERATURE

CLASSICAL . ... . . . . 240

THE EARLY CHURCH ..... 242

MEDIAEVAL . ... 244

THE REFORMATION AGE . ... 245

ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS .... 246

GENERAL LITERATURE . 249

xii Reunion in Eternity

APPENDIX

PAGE

THE OLD TESTAMENT, by Professor A. S. PEAKE, D.D. . 26,5
THE CLASSICAL WORLD, by T. E. PAGE,, D.C.L. . . 269

THE CHURCH OF ROME, by The Rev. CANON WILLIAM

BARRY, D.D. . . . . . .273

MYSTICISM, by ARTHUR E. WAITE . . . 277

INDEX 281

PART I
ESSAYS ON REUNION

'IN CHRIST REDEEMED, IN CHRIST
RESTORED '

x

IN this world of death a message of Reunion in
Eternity is a first necessity. It is as music to all
souls in pain. We do not say that it is always
listened to by the bereaved in the first force of their
passionate misery, while they feel in their breasts
the burning of the murderous steel. But the
months and the years soften a little-the first anguish
of the bitter wound. Then the dreadful thing is
to think of the long life to come which may go on in
loneliness for so many years. This passes into the
calm of acknowledged loss settling deep and still
over the subduing days of life. After that there may
come the peace of believing, the waiting in hope.

Depending entirely on the teaching of the New
Testament, we propose to set down a few points
which are generally admitted to be part of its
unveiling.

Reunion in Eternity

(1) The subject concerns only those who are in
Christ. Apart from His doing, His dying, His
rising again, His testimony, there is no doctrine
of the future. The essence of personal Christianity
lies in love to a personal Saviour. He has abolished
death by His Resurrection. He is the Conqueror
of the last enemy. He has risen and ascended, and
He rules. In His safe keeping are all faithful souls,
and, we may surely say, the bodies which were once
the robes and homes of these spirits. It is He Who
takes care of the passing soul and as a magnet
draws it upward to Himself, ft is towards Him
that the great forces of love go forth. This fact
carries reunion with it. Our gathering together
unto Him in the next life, to know and be known
of Him, will of itself make necessary our knowledge
of one another. He Who inspired the human love
that now seeks its own, He Who was Himself
strengthened and solaced thereby during the
earthly years when He walked softly in the bitter
ness of His soul, will never deny us our heart's
desire.

(2) It may be said that this excludes the vast
majority. But it is not so. We do not know
what may pass of a sudden, in the very moment

' In Christ Redeemed, in Christ Restored ' 5

of dying, between the soul and Christ. All the
great Christian teachers have told us that the very
slightest recognition on the part of men of the
Divine Sacrifice is enough to secure salvation.
In his two sermons on the penitent thief Mr.
Spurgeon refuses to admit that he is dealing with
a solitary, or at best an exceptional case. He says
that if the thief was an exceptional case there
would have been a hint given of so important a
fact. 4 A hedge would have been set about this
exception to all rules. Would not the Saviour
have whispered quietly to the dying man, " You
are the only man I am going to treat in this way " ?
No, our Lord spoke openly, and those about Him
heard what He said. Moreover, the inspired
penman has recorded it. If it had been an ex
ceptional case it would not have been written in
the Word of God.'

(3) Reunion rests upon the permanence of
personality. Through all changes of mind and
body something remains which we call ' I ' — that
is, our personal identity, resting on memory
which lends to individuality its chief value. With
out memory a man ceases to exist. Sydney
Dobell, in his eloquent essay on the Brontes,

Reunion in Eternity

refers to the little Jane Eyre's night journey to
Lowood. He says :

' There is something intensely, almost fearfully,
interesting in the diary of a child's feelings. This
"I," that seems to have no inheritance in the
earth, is an eternity with a heritage in all heavens.
This " me," which is thrown here and there as a
thing of nought — the frail, palpitating subject of
a schoolboy's tyranny, almost too fragile even to
make sport for him — fear not for it. It can endure.
This, that trembles at the opening of a parlour-
door, quails at the crushing of a china plate, droops
amid the daily cuffs and bruises of a household,
and faints with fear in a haunted room, will pass
alive through portals which the sun dare not enter,
survive all kinds of temporal and spiritual wreck,
move uninjured among falling worlds, meet un
dismayed the ghosts of the whole earth, pass un-
destroyed through the joys of angels — perhaps,
also, through anguish which would dissolve the
stars.'

As Robertson Smith has said, the relations of
person to person are the deepest and truest in
human life. Christ Himself yearned for His friends
and could not leave them. It is by our own

' In Christ Redeemed, in Christ Restored ' 7

personality that we can approach His. It is
possible for one soul to penetrate into another with
such full trust, such full understanding and love,
as to make faith something infinitely deeper than
the mere balancing of probabilities. Because
Christ is Christ and His people are His people,
because there is a great and deep love between
many who have been parted for the time by death,
it is certain that we shall know them in the
world of Eternity as we knew them — and far
better than we knew them — in the world of
Time. What endures is the love and trust that
bound us.

(4) It is blessedly true that we shall in the next
life find more to know and more to love than has
been our lot on earth. Many of us have been very
rich in love. We have lived in its atmosphere.
We have been rich in faithful and ennobling friend
ships. But the heart has a great capacity for
loving, and without loss of fealty to its early loves
it will go on and on in ever-extending affection.
And there are not a few who have had very little
love. Their lives have been lonely and grey.
They have loved Christ, and Christ has cared
for them in a very special manner. But among

Reunion in Eternity

their fellow-beings there have been few to mark
them.

' Alas ! that one is born in blight,
Victim of perpetual slight ;
When thou lookest on his face
Thy heart saith, " Brother, go thy ways !
None shall ask thee what thou doest,
Or care a rush for what thou knowest,
Or listen when thou repliest,
Or remember where thou liest."

Or, to quote another American poet :

* If she had — Well ! She longed, and knew not where
fore.

Had the world nothing she might live to care for ?
No second self to say her evening prayer for ? '

What sweet amends will be made to such lonely
pilgrims when they reach the world beyond !

(5) It is important that we should recognise
that the life into which we pass at death is not the
final form of blessedness. On this we must speak
with great reserve. But it would certainly appear
\ that there is a near future for the soul and also a
remoter future. Into the near future the soul
passes immediately and finds itself most blessed.
But beyond the present life of the redeemed in
glory there is the resurrection life. Of this we know
very little. There are, however, clear intimations

1 In Christ Redeemed, in Christ Restored ' 9

of a time when a body, mysteriously connected
with the body laid down in death, shall again
clothe the soul, when there will be a general judg
ment, when Christ shall come again. Robertson
Smith says that the goal of our theology is Christ
coming again in glory at the head of a spotless
Church. He further says : ' To Scripture we must
ever turn to realise the true historical Christ till
the Risen and Ascended One returns to His people.'
How far distant that day may be we cannot tell.
But it is a remoter future than the future with
which we deal. Meanwhile it is well with our
beloved who have passed within the veil. They
are in Christ's presence, and under Christ's tuition
they are all taught of the Lord, and great is their
peace. They have been made ready in ways we
do not understand for the final coming of Christ
when the number of the years is fulfilled. We
may look forward to this wonder, but we can
comprehend it very dimly. What we can under
stand is the safety and the blessedness of the life
that Christ has redeemed and restored, the life in
which, through Christ, we shall have the most
direct access to God the Father, the life of holy and
everlasting love.

II

IMMORTALITY WITHOUT GOD

OUR aim is to show that the Easter faith can only
live on the Easter sorrow. It will be permanently
maintained in the end only by those who believe
that this world of time holds as ' chief treasure one
forsaken grave.' All the hope of the world is built
on the empty tomb, and if the Christ Who was
buried did not rise again we have no sure founda
tion of belief. But it is, or was, possible to believe
in immortality, or at least hi future reunion with
the dead, without believing in Christ or God. The
thoughts of the world are turned now to the dead
as they never were before, and many false prophets
appear and deceive mankind. It is from Him Who
was Prophet, Priest, and King that we receive the
testimony which the Holy Spirit seals upon the
soul.

In this chapter we shall do no more than

point out the fact that men who have renounced

10

Immortality without God n

Christianity have comforted themselves with the
thought of meeting their dead once more under
clearer skies. No doubt the difference between
those who hold the faith of continuance and those
who do not is immense. For, as has been said, if
a man is merely a passing phantom and he knows it,
he orders his life in one way ; if a pilgrim towards
eternity, in quite another. Dr. William Barry
prophesied some years ago that all parties, govern
ments, and even religions, will be divided by one
clear line between the Mortals and the Immortals
— between those who measure values by their re
lation to death which cuts off hope and those who
believe in the life everlasting. The victory of faith
is sure. Unbelief, in whatever form it clothes
itself, ends at the hateful cypresses which lift
themselves above a vanishing world.

i

We begin by taking some examples from a
recent book, The Boyhood of Swinburne. Swinburne
assuredly repudiated Christianity, and he was one
of the few great writers who have personally and
by name insulted the Lord Jesus Christ. He re
jected immortality in very musical verses, but he

12 Reunion in Eternity

could write (to Christians) sometimes in another
strain. We take one or two extracts almost at
random. The following relates to Victor Hugo.
Swinburne writes : —

' The real loss of friends, the insuperable and
irremediable separation, is not, one feels more
and more deeply and certainly, that which is made
by death — nor yet by difference of opinion or
variety of forms of faith and hope — but only by
real unworthiness. I am very much gratified by
what you tell me of the Bishop's kind remembrance
of me. I hope you will like my little book on the
great and good man who always insisted so ardently
and earnestly in all his writings on the certainty
of immortality and reunion with those we have
loved, and, if ever he became at all unjust or less
than charitable, became so to those who denied
or doubted this. (Not that I think the creator of
Monseigneur Bienvenu ever was or could have been
uncharitable : but I have sometimes thought that
he and Mazzini hardly made allowance enough for
good and honest and unselfish men who cannot
share their faith in personal immortality.) '

Again : ' When I think of his intense earnestness

Immortality without God 13

of faith in a future life and a better world than this,
and remember how fervently Mazzini always urged
upon all who loved him the necessity of that belief
and the certainty of its actual truth, I feel very
deeply that they must have been right — or at least
that they should have been — however deep and
difficult the mystery which was so clear and trans
parent to their inspired and exalted minds may seem
to such as mine. They ought to have known, if
any man ever did : and if they were right, I, whose
love and devotion they requited with such kindness
as I never could have really deserved, shall (some
how) see them again.'

n

Carlyle cannot be reckoned among the Christians,
and yet he had a hope, which ran through his life,
of eternal reunion. The religion of Carlyle is a
very difficult subject, and we have no space in
which to discuss it. Was he a theist ? Hardly.
He did not believe that God was to be loved, or
reached by prayer. But he said, ' Whoever looks
into himself must be aware that at the centre of
things is a mysterious demiurgus who is God, and
who cannot in the least be adequately spoken of in

14 Reunion in Eternity

any human words.' And he said, ' What we desire
to know is, Who is the maker, and what is to come
to us when we have shuffled off this mortal coil ? '
In the Diary of William Allingham, a book which
contains many precious hints, we have more
definite information about Carlyle's rejection of
Christianity than anywhere else. He told Alling
ham about the horror of his mother when he said
to her as a boy, ' Did God Almighty come down and
make wheelbarrows in a shop ? ' She lay awake
at nights praying and weeping bitterly. ' As a
student,' he said, ' I read Gibbon, and then first
saw clearly that Christianity was not true.' Car-
lyle often spoke very theistically, but he was never
even sure that there was a Providence, though he
clung to the belief as well as he could.

Yet, strange to say, this sceptic maintained from
first to last his faith of reunion with the longed-for
and the lost. He wrote in 1823 to Jeannie Welsh,
who afterwards became his wife : c With the hope
of meeting in a brighter scene of existence, I look
upon death as the most inestimable privilege of
man. Oh, God ! if we are not to meet there, if
those that are gone from us are but a mockery and
lost in everlasting nothingness, wherefore hast Thou

Immortality without God

created us at all ? ' There followed long, hard,
toilsome years, and at the end of them the bright
girl who had given him her youth sank into a
feeble and delicate old woman and died. She was
mourned with a strange mixture of love and re
morse. All the world knows of that mourning.
When Carlyle, who was then past seventy, gathered
his thoughts again, he began to hope for a future
meeting with her whose life had known little of the
true peace and rest of love. Nothing could take
away his thoughts from ' the still country where at
last we and our loved ones shall be together again.'
When his father died, ' passing from the realm of
sleep to that of death,' Carlyle wrote : ' God give
me to live to my father's honour and to His. And
now, beloved father, farewell for the last time in
this world of shadows ! In the world of realities,
may the Great Father again bring us together in
perfect holiness and perfect love ! Amen ! '

in

We choose, as one more example, Henry Thomas
Buckle, the author of that brilliant fragment,
The History of Civilisation. Very serious deductions
must be made from some enthusiastic impressions

1 6 Reunion in Eternity

of readers who were fascinated by its brilliancy.
But when all is said and done it is a quickening and
stirring book, and has stimulated thoughts in many
minds. Buckle passes, not unnaturally, with most
people as a sceptic of the most aggressive and
blinded type, and no doubt he thought that all we
sum up in the word Christianity was a mischievous
delusion, to be rejected with scorn. But Buckle
borrowed one great clause from the creed which
he condemned, and took it for the expression of
his heart's deepest yearning. He looked for the
resurrection of the dead and the life of the world
to come. He held that an endless love implied
an endless object. To him life would have been
impossible without this great faith. Those who
read Pilgrim Memories to-day will be even more
surprised than his first readers, for it is almost
safe to say that no one of any intellectual mark
holds Buckle's position now.

IV

We say, then, that it has been possible to believe
more or less strongly in the persistence of life, in
the kindness of the Veiled Energy, and in reunion.
Why, it may be asked, should this be impossible ?

Immortality without God 17

It may be urged that those who have not found God
in their life here may pass to another life in which
God is equally hidden, in which the existence of
God is constantly denied. The dark and secret
forces that shape the world and the history of
the world may prolong the relationships of Time
into the relationships of that world where there is
Time no longer.

We might say a good deal in reply to this, but
it is not necessary. In the eighteenth century men
would have little to do with an invisible world,
'but they clung to their hopes of an invisible home.
They detested mysticism and enthusiasm as ' very
horrid things,' but they were not prepared to take
leave for ever of the beloved dead nor to renounce
their own expectation of a happy world. This
did not last, and it could not last. For if we pass
beyond the natural into the supernatural — as we
must, when we believe in immortality — then the
supernatural must be a reality in the present as
well as in the future ; and if our home in the super
natural world is infinitely more important than our
brief years in Time, then even now our wisdom is
to be found by the engagement of the mind with
the Eternal. But we do not believe that philo-

B

1 8 Reunion in Eternity

sophical argument, or even Theism, is enough to
bear the assaults of death. It is the Risen Christ
Who abolished death, and only those who trust in
Him hold a safe faith, a faith that will not crumble
to dust before the break of day, before the terrors
of Time.

Ill

'LIFE IN GOD, AND UNION THERE'

WE have already pointed out that the desire for
reunion in eternity with those who have left
behind them this world of Time is not necessarily
a Christian desire. Nor is it true that even the
belief in such reunion is necessarily Christian.
The faith has been held by many who, if not enemies
of the Christian name, would at any rate never
claim it. In a biography of the Rev. Donald Sage,
minister of Resolis in Ross -shire, written in 1840,
we find a very vivid illustration, which we adopt
the more readily because such a passage of ex
perience very seldom occurs in Christian literature.
Mr. Sage married young, and was devotedly attached
to his wife. She was taken from him very soon,
and he was in despair, wishing that he might die.
He goes on : —

4 Such a desire came upon me so strongly that I
hailed with delight every unsuccessful effort of
nature to regain its former position under the

19

2O Reunion in Eternity

pressure of present weakness, as so many sure pre
cursors of death which would unite me to her from
whom I had been so recently and sorely separated.
I gradually recovered, however, but still the notion
haunted my mind. Then conscience began to
ask, " Why did I wish to die ? " My sorrows at
once responded to the inquiry — " Just to be with
Harriet." But, was I sure of that ? If Harriet
was in Heaven, as I could not but hope that she
was, was nothing else to be the consequence of
death to me but to go to Heaven merely " to be with
her " ? I was struck dumb ; I was confounded
with my own folly. So, then, the only enjoyment I
looked for after death was, not to be with Christ,
but to be with Harriet ! As if Harriet without Christ
could make Heaven a place of real happiness to me ! '
He wrestled with his misery, and when he was
almost worn out there flashed into his mind the
words, ' I am the Door.' He had peace in Christ,
and with that peace came resignation mingled with
the old hope now made sure.

i

It is Christian, though not fully Christian, to
rest the hope of reunion in eternity on the faith

1 Life in God, and Union There ' 21

that God is love, that He is the Author of love, and
that He, being the Author, is also the Finisher of
love. He does not betray the soul that has found
Him so, neither will He put to shame the hopes that
have been built on His faithfulness.

Perhaps the chief representative of this school
is that great prophet of love and immortality and
reunion, Robert Browning. In briefly describing
his position we follow with some closeness a very
sound article on ' Mysticism in English Poetry,'
written by Dr. Caroline Spurgeon. Dr. Spurgeon
says that certain mystics are love-mystics, like
Wordsworth. There are philosophical mystics and
there are devotional mystics. Browning was a
keen dialectician and a very subtle reasoner. But
he always appealed from the intellect to that which
is beyond intellect. Feeling and intuition he held
to be far above knowledge. Mere knowledge will
not enable us to reach God. In one of his pro-
founder passages he says :—

4 Wholly distrust thy knowledge then, and trust
As wholly love allied to ignorance !
There lies thy truth and safety. . . .

Consider well !

Were knowledge all thy faculty, then God
Must be ignored : love gains Him by first leap.'

22 Reunion in Eternity

These words, ' Love gains Him by first leap,' hold
the very heart of Browning. He holds that the
object of life is to know God, and that it is only in
knowing love that we learn to know God. Love is
the meaning of life, and whoever does not learn
it, whoever does not live for it, must be eternally
lost.

It might be said truly enough that Shelley is
also a believer in love as the supreme secret and the
master-key of life. But the difference between
Shelley and Browning is unbridgeable. Shelley's
God is not personal, and he has no belief in in
dividuality. What he expects is not an immortal
life, but a mystic merging of his own personality
with the universe. On the other hand, in Browning
the sense of individuality was supreme. He held
with utter and unshaken conviction that there is for
each man and woman a persistent life on its up
ward way, distinct from the temporary coverings
it makes use of.

' From first to last of lodging, I was I,
And not at all the place that harboured me.'

Browning had that recognition of personal identity,
the bewildering consciousness of the ' I ' beneath

1 Life in God, and Union There ' 23

all the marvellous changes of body and mind, which
is so powerfully expressed by Fitzjames Stephen
in his reply to John Stuart Mill : ' All human
language, all human observation, implies that the
mind, the " I," is a thing hi itself, a fixed point in
the midst of a world of change, of which world of
change its own organs form a part. It is the same
yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow.' Stephen goes
on to say, ' It seems to me that we are spirits in
prison, able only to make signals to each other, but
with a world of things to think and speak which
our signals cannot describe at all.'

Given, then, a personal God, a God Who is Love,
Who bestowed love on His creatures and made them
love Him in return, a God Who can be reached only
by the stair of love, and given also the persistent
individuality which maintains itself through all
tamings and subduings and discipline and purify
ing, and we have a doctrine of recognition and
reunion in eternity which, properly understood and
fortified, defies denial.

ii

As illustrations and confirmations of the doctrine
expounded above we make a few extracts from

24 Reunion in Eternity

Browning. We take the first from that mournful
drama 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon.' Mildred says
to Tresham, who has killed her lover Henry
Merton :—

4 Oh true ! There 's nought for me to pardon ! True !
You loose my soul of all its cares at once.
Death makes me sure of him for ever ! You
Tell me his last words ? He shall tell me them,
And take my answer.'

In 'The Ring and the Book,' the dying^ Pomp ilia
says of her one friend Caponsacchi :—

' O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,
No work begun shall ever pause for death !
Love will be helpful to me more and more
I' the coming course, the new path I must tread —
My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for
that ! '

Again in ' La Saisiaz ' :—

' Yes, I knew — but not with knowledge such as thrills

me while I view
Yonder precinct which henceforward holds and hides

the Dear and True.
Grant me (once again) assurance we shall each meet

each some day,
Walk — but with how bold a footstep ! on a way—

but what a way.! '

* Life in God, and Union There ' 25

And then take the familiar, dear and immortal
lines from ' By the Fireside ' :—

' Think, when our one soul understands

The great Word which makes all things new,

When earth breaks up and heaven expands,
How will the change strike me and you

In the house not made with hands ?

Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,

Your heart anticipate my heart,
You must be just before, in fine,

See and make me see, for your part,
New depths of the divine ! '

Browning's convictions were passionately shared
by his wife, who in one of her love-letters referred
to the views of a friend who had declared herself
a materialist. She wrote : ' In the face of those
conclusions, she said she was calm and resigned.
It is more than I could be, as I confessed. My whole
nature would cry aloud against the most pitiful
result of the struggle here — a wrestling only for
the dust, and not for the crown. What a restless
melancholy would fall upon me if I had such
thoughts — and what a dreadful indifference ! All
grief, to have itself to end in ! All joy, to be based
upon nothingness ! All love, to feel eternal separa
tion under and over it ! Dreary and ghastly it

26 Reunion in Eternity

would be. I should not have strength to love you,
I think, if I had such a miserable creed. And for
life itself — would it be worth holding on such terms,
with our blind Ideals making mocks and mows at u >
wherever we turned ? A game to throw up, this
life would be, as not worth playing to an end ! '

IV

THE CHILDREN OF THE
RESURRECTION

WE have written of the faith in eternal reunion as
rooted in the confidence that God is a Person, that
He is Love, and that His love guarantees the happy
immortality of His people. This has sufficed for
many who have abandoned, or who have never
held, the belief in miracles. And it may as well be
said that never at any time in the long history of
faith did the outward miracle come first. What
was sure was first of all guaranteed by experience.
Communion with God, with Christ, is a fact in the
consciousness — call it a subjective fact if you will —
which cannot be set aside. It is fortified by the
long rich experience of the purest and the best, who
have held fast to this faith, in ecstasy, in agony,
in the long drawn out monotony of the common
days.

Surely St. Paul thought after this manner. What

27

28 Reunion in Eternity

was final to him was the consciousness of Christ
within him the hope of glory. But St. Paul also
held that the Resurrection was the sure confirma
tion of his belief — so sure that it became essential.
And in face of the facts it may safely be said that
the faith in immortality and the Christian redemp-
tion cannot survive very long among men if this
foundation were to be removed.

In these dark days there are some, even of th?
faithful, who for the time have lost courage and
hope. They are with Jesus when round Him thero
gathered the clouds of a mysterious agony only
faintly typified by the darkness of eclipse which,
hid the material sun in the universe, what time He
was dying. But not long will the Children of the
Resurrection be kept in prison. They must return
to the days of their youth, and they will recover
their first hope in the company of the angel who sat
in reposeful contemplation within the dark house
where the Body of Jesus had lain. That waiting
minister of God shows us what the Children of the
Resurrection shall be in the fulness of their trust.

The Children of the Resurrection 29

ii
A sceptic has written :—

' Strange, is it not ? that of the myriads who
Before us passed the door of darkness through,

No one returns to tell us of the road,
Which to discover we must travel too.

The revelations of devout and learn 'd

Who rose before us, and as prophets burn'd,

Are all but stories which, awoke from sleep,
They told their fellows, and to sleep return'd.'

This would be true if it were not that Jesus revived
and rose. If He had never risen, the words ' He
was crucified, dead, and buried ' would be the
saddest words ever spoken in the world. But the
Cross is the throne of power because of the Resur
rection. What we rest upon is the fact that the
Sacred Body of Jesus Christ rose and left its grave
empty. Where was that Sacred Body ? We know
very well that if His foes could have produced it,
it would have been produced. We know very well
that its rising was not expected by the disciples,
and that the fact when it first showed itself was met
with incredulity, bewilderment, and terror. All
attempts to invalidate this evidence, all hypotheses

30 Reunion in Eternity

that deprive it of meaning, must be set aside. The
Gospel tells us of our Lord's supernatural entrance
into life, and of His supernatural resumption of life
when His atoning work was completed.

in

And so it is blessedly true that believers are now
to be reckoned as Children of the Resurrectior .
The Resurrection helps us to understand in som3
measure their life beyond Jordan. Shall we try to
set down some elementary features of that life "
It is not a disembodied and ghostlike existence
The redeemed soul is to be clothed in a perfect body,
so that in and through all its powers it may serve
and glorify God. It attains union with God, such
union as can be had by finite beings through the
illumination of all their various powers with rein
forcements, which we cannot define, of new powers.

It will be, we know, a restful life. There will be
none of the old weariness of the heart and anxious
struggle, of the fearing and the doubting which were
present in the mortal years. It will be a fife of
praise, but also, most assuredly, a life of action.
It will not be, all of it, direct worship, though in a
sense all its doings will be acts of worship. Heaven,

The Children of the Resurrection 31

we know, resounds with voices of praise, but that
is because the dwellers there are so happy hi then"
work, for ever joyful and f or ever victorious.

It will be a life of joy. The blessed dead have
had too many failures, too many wounds. Heaven
will be a place of healing, where God keeps all the
treasures that He gave and that we let fall. The
spirit will be nourished with constant influxes of
divine blessedness and constant new visions of God.
The body will know no weariness, will need no
repose, will have impressed on it no necessity of
dying. All these things are left behind. Most of
the saints were very very weary when they sank
into their last sleep, but they will never know
weariness in the eternity to come.

It will be a life of growth, without limit and
without ceasing. The eternal life of the redeemed
will never reach a point beyond which no advance
is possible. Their life is a perfection, but it is a
relative perfection, for it is also, and without limit,
a progress. So the blessed dead say with the holy
Apostle, c Not that I have already attained or am
already perfect.' In a very fine sentence Canon
Mozley points out that the Gospel dared to intro
duce the element of glory into the destiny of man.

32 Reunion in Eternity

The worthy continuation of existence must be a
continuation which is always an ascent.

But chiefly the life of Heaven is a life of unbroke:i
love. God is love, Christ is love, life is love. WB
make no progress hi divine lore until we have
mastered that fact. And this is the truth abom;
reunion. In our harsh, fighting, earthly days, love
was much to us, but it was limited. It struggled
often for expression. It was frequently darkened
by misunderstanding, and only now and then did
it attain a heavenly completeness. Those times
we all look back upon as the only times when we
really lived fully and drew the breath of the eternal
world. Our beloved dead are waiting as eagerly
to tell us their story as we are to tell them ours.
We shall be together in days of loyal life when all
failures of the past may be forgotten, just as though
no break had been at all. How well it is with the
dead ! How happy we should be if they ' look us
through and through ' ! They are not to be sought
in unshared deeps through which their spirits
wander fatigued. The companions of the devout
life are but removed, as it were, a hand's breadth
from us, but they without us shall not be made
perfect. We cannot think of them as they were

The Children of the Resurrection 33

when sinking under the weight of illness and broken
with the burden of the years. Nay, we think of
them as satisfied with good things and crowned
with lovingkindness, so that their youth is renewed
like the eagle's.

RENUNCIATION AND REUNION

' I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until
that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom.

THESE words were uttered by our Lord befon
Gethsemane. It has been well pointed out thai
Jesus could then give utterance to words of praise.
In Gethsemane He was able only to submit. But
it is not enough perhaps to say that the first clause
is merely a declaration that death is near — c It is
the last time I shall drink paschal wine with you.
I am to die at the Passover.' Rather we should
say that Christ was contemplating the swiftly
passing period of His earthly life. This was
an utterance of renunciation. He coloured and
softened and brightened His words with the thought
of reunion — of meeting again. There may be some
to whom this message of the Master will come with
fresh power in their present time of agony.

54

Renunciation and Reunion 35

i

We have chosen to regard this utterance as our
Lord's farewell to all the innocent solaces of life.
They had not been many with Him, but they were
not entirely wanting. Sometimes He found homes
that were sanctuaries of love and peace and cheered
Him for a time.

Few, indeed, were these pleasures. He was very
poor ; often He had nowhere to lay His head ;
He wore a peasant's robe, a garment without seam.
He had little rest, but He did oftentimes pause to
pray. He had few friends, but He found refresh
ment in their company. But whatever there was
of these softening elements in His life, He put them
at this point solemnly away. True, He was no
gloomy ascetic. The Son of Man came eating and
drinking. If, with Spurgeon, we take the cup of
wine as a symbol of earthly cheer, we understand
His deliberate and significant resolve to partake of
it no more.

There are multitudes in our time who understand
His decision. They may not have voluntarily re
nounced everything that they once held dear, but
their cup of gladness has been taken away never

36 Reunion in Eternity

to be replaced. The human affection which was
their joy and stay is with them no more. In place
of it has come that heartache which time makes DO
less painful. Their dreams of a quiet and restful
age have been shattered. The homes they had
built up by life-long labour are in the dust. Long
before they are called upon to give up life itself
they are called to renounce what once made life
sweet. There was a time when in their daily to 1
they looked forward to the evening with its quiet
recompense of refreshment. But now there is an
end.

There was before Christ, as He spoke, Hi>
sternest work, and He had to forgo all thai;
hindered its accomplishment. With open eyes anc
with His whole heart, He prepared Himself to
embrace the Cross.

Many of us have our cross to meet. Many ol
us have met it. For neither are the days what
they once were, nor will be. The sunshine of
the earlier days for them is dead. They have
had that sunshine. They have, it may be, walked
joyfully before God and men. Life has come
gently to them. Privation, failure, sorrow have
been practically unknown. It has seemed as if

Renunciation and Reunion 37

the ground were firm beneath their feet and
would remain firm. ' In my prosperity I said, I
shall never be moved.'

But the war has come — bereaving, bewildering,
impoverishing, shaking earth and heaven. The
grey sisters of human fate have entered, and they
threaten to abide in the house for ever. Disease
and loss and pining care overwhelm the sufferers.
They may live to resume their activities, to adapt
themselves to changes, but they can never be the
same again. It is well to recognise it, to put away
and to renounce the old hopefulness and rejoicing,
so far as it had to do with time. We have learned
how fragile our happiness was, but duty remains
and love.

The young will have to bear the burdens and con
front the problems of a saddened time. Thank
God there is a resilience in youth. It has a power
of recovery save in special cases. Life's morning
radiance cannot be wholly scattered. New joys,
new friendships, new lives are possible, and we
reverently adore the mercy of God in sending them.
But we write rather for those who are in the after
noon, or in the evening, and who know that their
sorrows have gone down to the springs of life.

38 Reunion in Eternity

There are for such a new sense of God and Christ;,
a truer communion, the experience of a soul knitted,
as it never was in free and careless days, to the
suffer ings of humanity. These are our solaces,
but there are more, and one in especial which
comforted our Lord. This was the assurance o ?
reunion.

ii

Our Lord's renunciation was in a manner com
pensated for by His certainty of reunion. He went
on, ' Until the day when I drink it new with you
in My Father's kingdom.'

With you. The teaching of our Lord, read and
interpreted, is based on the assurance of a reunion
in eternity. Of all the Father has given to the
Son He has lost not one. He will never lose one.
Wherever and however His people die, they pass
straight to Him.

But for the moment our Lord is not thinking of
a heaven peopled with the crowding guests of God.
He is thinking of the little band who have been
nearest Him in His earthly life. They are to be
as near to Him in the new country — perhaps nearest
to Him of all — and He is to be close to them. They

Renunciation and Reunion 39

shall eat and drink and rejoice and praise together.
He is to be as happy with His people as His people
are with Him. The wine cup they drink with
Christ in heaven is an emblem of an endless and
unpolluted joy.

So we move on to this rapture. It draws nearer
and nearer. It is hard for us to interpret the
mystery of God's wise and holy providence. It
would be impossible, if the hope that is sure and
steadfast were destroyed.

It is not destroyed, but confirmed. Let troubled
and lonely hearts take fresh courage. They may
have to go softly all their years. The voices that
once thrilled them are for the moment past hearing.
But when death brings us closer to God we shall
know that He has been in all ways just and faithful
and loving to us. With what a rush our spirits will
run to reunite themselves with the beloved ! They,
too, will make haste to meet us, and in utter thank
fulness and humility we with them shall claim the
Redeemer as our Lord and Friend, and fall at the
feet of perfect Goodness, perfect Purity, and perfect
Love.

VI
'THEY WITHOUT US'

4 THEY without us ' and with God — how do they
regard us now ? We know what life is to us without
them. But to-night as they sing their Evensong
at the foot of the Eternal Throne, are they touched
by the sense of our necessities and longings on
earth ? How do those who have crossed the sea
of life look upon their old companions who are still
tossing on its stormy tide ?

For answer let us remember how Christ behaved
Himself when He was about to pass into the higher
lands of God. He knew what awaited Him in the
other world. The splendour and the peace of
eternal life had been His before the world began.
Did He then carry Himself as One indifferent to
those He was leaving, as One who was to forget
them and content Himself in a higher fellowship?
Behold, how He loved them ! As He gazed out
into the glory of the Father, His thought was still

iO

' They without us' 41

for them. Beneath the magic significant night,
silent with excess of meaning, He said, l In my
Father's house are many mansions : I go to prepare
a place for you.' He asked to be remembered, and
He promised to return : ' This do in remembrance
of me. . . . Ye do show the Lord's death till He
come.' If Christ on the steps of the throne dearly
prized the remembrance of those He left behind,
if Christ's concern with the world did not end with
His dying, did not end even with His ascension,
surely the same is true of those who had no life
before this, to whom heaven was a strange place,
who bore into it no loves except those which began
on earth.

Phillips Brooks has said that the haunting fear
of the disciples during the days of our Lord's flesh
must have been that He would leave them. Two
friends begin life together. They sit side by side
at the village school, on the college bench, and in
due time they go out into the world. A few years,
and one has greatly distanced the other. He has
shown more various powers, greater energy, quicker
apprehension. His mind has become familiar
with the regions of which his old companion knows
nothing. The ancient friendship may be kept up,

42 Reunion in Eternity

but an element of pain has entered it. One feels
that his friend has passed into other experiences,
has gone whither he cannot come. In other words,
his friend has left him in the spirit, if not outwardly.
Of two comrades, one discovers the glory of Christ,
the other remains hi blindness, and the two spirits
cannot again enter into free and rich communion.
Christ, as the disciples saw, was rising higher. The
interval between Him and them seemed to widen.
Near as He might be, there was an infinite separate-
ness which fell ever and anon on all their relations.
There was a fear, which He was at last to confirm,
that He would depart from this mortal life, and that
His visible presence would vanish from their eyes.
The last distress was but the culmination of many
misgivings that had gone before it. The disciples
kept thinking that they were not loveworthy, that
Christ, Who knew them, Who was so far above them,
could not be touched by any abiding affection for
men so ignorant, so sinful, so weak as they.

This was because they did not understand the
meaning of love. A thoughtful writer has said that
one of the last lessons life teaches is the difference
between love and admiration. At first we believe
that they are the same, and think that we prize

* They without us ' 43

love when we are really exulting in admiration.
But heaven is the world of love, not the world
of admiration. The disciples rejoiced when men
admired them, when the spirits were subject unto
them. At the outset of His work, Jesus Himself
was tempted to accept admiration at the cost of
love. He rejected it, and had to make the most of
such love as was given Him, for of admiration He
had very little from His puzzled and stammering
followers. Indeed, as the same writer remarks,
love is hard to express ; one must master half a
dozen languages besides that of the tongue before
he can render it. Admiration is a pungent, con
centrated, unmistakable thing, and men drink it
in as the elixir of life. Doubtless, when admiration
is sincere, it elevates those who give it, and it may
greatly help and quicken those who receive it. It
is the starved heart that does not know what it
is generously to admire. Multitudes of men and
women would have acquitted themselves more
worthily if they had received at the right time the
encouragement they had earned. Still, admira
tion will not compare with love. Admiration at
the best takes hold of something which is not the
essence of the soul. Admiration is based too often

44 Reunion in Eternity

on the power to do brilliant things. Admiration
may have even a lower foundation than that ; it
may rise or fall with the appreciation of the world.
So long as a man succeeds, it follows him. When
ever he appears to fail, even though the apparent
failure may be an actual triumph, it turns away in
disappointment. Love does not depend on any
thing external ; love does not ask the opinion of
others ; love lays hold of the heart and clings to it.
It attaches itself to what endures, rejoices, not that
the spirits are subject to the dear one, but rather
is glad because his name is written in heaven.
' Love beareth all things, believeth all things,
hopeth all things, endureth all things.' Love can
survive straining and bruising ; admiration is
brittle. Admiration replaces one ideal very easily
by another. Love cannot forget. It holds the
door open for new-comers, but it lets no guest pass
out. Admiration is the spectator that turns away
when its eyes are feasted. Love is the communicant
at the table of a perpetual sacrament.

Now the misgiving of the disciples was due in
part at least to this confusion between admiration
and love. Very likely when Jesus chose them
they imagined that He saw something in them the

' They without us ' 45

world had missed, that He admired some gift of
force, or eloquence, or courage, or wisdom. As
the parting hour drew near, this illusion wholly
vanished. They saw that He was infinitely above
them. The one possible consolation was that He
loved them, that He would not cease, that He could
not cease, loving them wherever He went. The
whole burden of His sacred farewell was an assurance
of this. He expounded to them the deep mystery
of love, constant for evermore. He told them that
true love was union, that by union His people were
part of Himself, that seeing they were knit to Him
they must follow Him wherever He went. He
was to rise higher, but He rose to raise them. The
forces of His heavenly power were to be spent for
this, and He could not see of the travail of His soul
and be satisfied till the Church was with Him in
glory. So we know that the last, the least, the
weakest, is awaited at the fountains of life.

Now we can answer our question, and silence our
misgiving. ' They without us shall not be made
perfect ' : ' they without us ' could not, if we might
dare to say it, be made perfect even by the love of
God. The perfection of the blessed dead cannot
be achieved till the living they wait for come. We

46 Reunion in Eternity

feel that we are not worthy now to loose their
shoe-latchet, or to touch their garments' hem ;
but since love is love, that must not trouble us.
While they complete themselves in regions beyond
our view, we are to remember them, to look for them,
to prepare for them. We must try to keep the
straight path, so far as we can see it, to seek that
we may reach the spirit-land unsoiled and noble.
They remember us, they wait for us, they will
welcome us. They are saying, if we* had ears to
hear, ' Dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and
my crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly
beloved.'

VII

BETWEEN BEREAVEMENT AND
REUNION

THERE is an interval, long or short, between be
reavement and reunion. This is the hardest part
of life to hearts that know the: mystery of love.
At first it seems as if all had lost its savour. Black
cold winters are succeeded by grey dead summers.
The yearning for sunshine and rest cannot be
satisfied. It often seems as if heart and energy
must die under the depressing influence of continued
gloom.

But the faithful are not left without aid or with
out duties. They are suffered indeed almost to
break their hearts over those whom they love and
lose. They sorrow, and it is right they should
sorrow, but they must not sorrow as those who have
no hope. They are not left without the succours
and the counsels of grace.

47

48 Reunion in Eternity

r

At first bereavement has a paralysing effect, and
when the heart revives it fastens on the beloved
dead. This is wise and right and inevitable.
Death deepens our knowledge of the departed.
Whatever marred or hindered the full manifesta
tion of the beautiful soul ceases to be remembered
We idealise, it may be said, but the ideal is truei
than the real. In this dim world of cloud and care
we often fail to recognise our angels till they are
taken from our earthly sight. It also happens
often, especially in times like these, that they dis
play in their last months or years qualities of
heroism and nobility of sacrifice with which they
were not credited. We then know still more
deeply how great the gift was which we possessed
for a season and have not lost for ever. It is greatly
wise to meditate on our crowned and sainted dead.
We may not wisely say much in the new dust of the
sudden blow that has struck us, but we may go
to our friends and speak softly with closed doors
and behold through their clearer eyes what treasures
were in the hearts that have been stilled. It is not
well to be lavish with our confidence. It is not

Between Bereavement and Reunion 49

well to put our grief into many words. But we
think of the blessed as they spring up full-statured
and transfigured in the light of the other world,
and we know them for what they are. We should
cultivate their spiritual presence. Their pictures,
now sanctified by death, should hang upon our walls.
We should live to be what they would wish us to
be, to do what they would wish us to do. Indeed,
for a time this is often the only comfort. We have
but one desire, and that is to make life a straight,
quick, thoughtful journey in the path which their
feet have pressed. We seek to be worthy of them,
and we are held up to that which is highest in us
by the force of their example. They have reached
the spirit -land victorious and pure, and we are fain
to follow.

Nor should we forget that they in their blessed
ness are not forgetting us. That is a strange,
deep word of the Apostle, ' They without us.' He
further says that c they without us shall not be
made perfect.' How this is to be understood we
cannot fully know. 4 1 was not worthy to see the
blessed grieve. That is a sight upon which the
angels look with awe and which brings those tears
which are salvation into the eyes of God.' We do

D

50 Reunion in Eternity

not know what the real spiritual world is like, nor
do we know the supreme force of the affections of
those who live in it. What we do know is that as
long as we are grieving hopelessly for them their
happiness must be troubled. The opaque and
earthly habits which divide the life of the body
from that of the spirit forbid us to go far, but we
may be sure that our sorrow for the dead has their
true sympathy and, may it be, their profound
compassion.

For we are to rejoice in their blessed change.
Our eyes dazzle as we think that they died young.
But the fragmentariness of all human life as it
flashes into the unknown is plain to us. We are
saved by our implicit faith in that which will com
plete the fragment and orb it into something which
has a meaning.

ii

We are to use all that Christ gives us in the way
of consolation. In all our affliction Christ is
afflicted. Friends are often helpless as they see
the blow descend, and the agony is endured by the
suffering soul, and Christ shares its agony. We are
to dwell under the everlasting and living Cross of

Between Bereavement and Reunion 51

choosing in all things God's will rather than our
own. The will of God is to be heartily accepted
when it crucifies, even as it is accepted when it
heals and gladdens. Those days of triumphant
affection and pride are over. We rejoiced in
them, and we did well. It is for Christ to teach us
to bow, as He Himself bowed, to the better will of
God, and the will of God was that He should be
crucified between the thieves.

Is it granted to us to have actual communion
with the dead before the reunion ? We have no
distinct revelation, and yet ' in clear dream and
solemn vision ' much may be granted to the soul.
Christ holds the dead by His right hand and His
left hand holds ours. Is it possible that new cur
rents of covenanting love may pass through Him
from one to the other ? How many can speak of
sadden uplift ings, touches, guidances, which seem
to come from the ancient love ?

But it becomes us to speak with caution. Mrs.
Oliphant in her beautiful little book, The Beleaguered
City, shows how difficult it is to establish any real
intercourse between the seen and the unseen.
There is the spiritual faith and the purified affection
of the higher human natures, and that may mean

52 Reunion in Eternity

something of intercourse. But it is vain to break
by mere marvels through the barriers that separate
our world of sense and the present from the land of
eternal things. She shows us how little beyond
fear the supernatural world would be able to inspire
the hearts of those who live in to-day, even if it
were permitted to invade them.

in

To be tired of life is to be tired for want of life.
But many of the bereaved are utterly weary. They
should do their best to recover an interest in life.
They should not, if they can help it, give up work.
We are not speaking of the young, who have the
opportunities and hopes of the future, whose
natures are resilient. But those who grow old can
never hope to be again all that they were. There
is a healthful weariness of fatigue and exhaustion
after hard work. But there is a form of weariness
due to sorrow which exceeds natural power and
endurance, and must be alleviated. In this weari
ness the stronger and nobler motives of past days
seem to have vanished or to have lost command.
The sufferers are discouraged and disheartened
before they enter the lists. They cannot win their

Between Bereavement and Reunion 53

souls in patience by drawing strength out of the
struggle. It may be the highest wisdom in them
to recognise that even with a spiritual support they
must change their way of living. There are
pleasures they must resign, there are tasks for
which they are no longer fit. But they will find
new fields to be cultivated, new opportunities for
sympathy if fewer for achievement. They will
learn to expect less in this world, but to meditate
more on the next. They will battle less and help
more. They will make more opportunity for in
tercession, and especially they will plead for those
who are in the midst of the strife. The fulness of
life can be found in quiet forms and in sequestered
places. Desires have to be carefully limited.
There must be reticence and moderation in earthly
plans and duties. But compensation will not be
wanting. The mystic cloud of hope will begin to
glow. The saintly love of the divine world — its
peace and light and beatitude will disclose them
selves more and more fully. The hope that maketh
not ashamed will be seen to spring from a divine
source, and point to a divine goal.

VIII
THE REUNION OF SOULS : TENNYSON

TENNYSON'S In Memoriam is perhaps the most
profound and beautiful treatment of the reunion
of souls that is to be found anywhere. It has been
described as worthy to be placed on the same list
with the Oresteia, the Divina Commedia, and Faust.
It may be affirmed that Tennyson and Browning
saved the higher poetry of their own era from
despair. They touch the dreariest landscape with
a beam of living hope. Shelley's despair is calm
and constant. Clough and Arnold are often nearly
as sorrowful, but here and there we find in their
writings an undertone of faith.

We believe, and hope to show, that In Memoriam
is a deeply Christian book. But its appeal has been
universal. Mr. Wilfrid Ward tells us that Huxley
once spoke strongly of ' the insight into scientific
method shown in Tennyson's In Memoriam^ and
pronounced it to be equal to that of the greatest

54

The Reunion of Souls : Tennyson 55

experts. Huxley wrote to Sir Michael Foster :
* He was the only modern poet, I think the only
poet, since Lucretius, who has taken the trouble
to understand the work and tendency of the men
of science.' Tennyson knew the terror of that
process of selection which science has established,
but his faith in the ' strong Son of God ' was
victorious over all his fears. He viewed present
and future in a mystic cloud of hope.

That In Memoriam is by no means an easy book
is admitted by all real students. There are snatches
of beauty that appeal at once to every sorrowful
heart, but the full beauty and significance of the
book can be understood only by exact study. In
particular, the general scheme of the elegies can be
discerned, and we are thereby enabled to follow
the gradual course of the poet's thought. A model
commentary is that of Dr. A. C. Bradley, and there
are other books, noticeably those by Professor
Sneath and Thomas Davidson, which are rich in
suggestion. They bring us to the conclusion that
Tennyson gradually works his way to the grand
truth of the reunion of souls. It has to be kept in
mind that the poem is inspired by a passionate
grief and affection. The struggle with sorrow

56 Reunion in Eternity

is prolonged, and it is personal. In this way it is
differentiated from the great elegies on Edward
King and Keats and Clough. But it is equally
important to observe that for all his grief the poet
was able through months and years to portray
the stages and the phases of his inward battle.
His loss was not one of those which tear the heart
asunder and set a seal of silence on the lips —

4 Yet I bear it and am bearing,
Only do not ask me how.'

We desire to discuss with as much brevity as is
possible the foundations of Tennyson's thought
and the progress traceable in the book towards a
strengthened faith in the reunion of souls parted
by death.

As to Tennyson's general assumptions, we agree
with those who find in him a poetical statement
of Kantian ideas. Kant furnished to mankind a
sort of final analysis of the philosophical movement
up to his time. In his Critique of Pure Reason he is
agnostic. He teaches that the mind cannot know
the real world. But in treating of ' Practical

The Reunion of Souls : Tennyson 57

Reason ' Kant restores to us that which he has
taken away. In a word, he finds God, Freedom
and Immortality, given to us in terms of conscious
ness. They cannot be proved, but they are
essential factors in our inmost being. Tennyson
grew gradually towards that creed till he made it
completely his own. But he enriched it by a
certain mystic contemplation through which he
appeared at times to rise to that state of Oriental
enlightenment when the body is forgotten and the
soul dwells in the paradise of purity and light.
Tennyson held, with Kant, that we can only ' know '
phenomena, but that we can reach and must reach
the transcendental objects of religion by faith.
Poems like In Memoriam, The Two Voices, and
The Ancient Sage are built on this basis. It must
not be supposed that Tennyson's belief lay outside
the intellectual circuits. ' Believe,' says Browning,
' and the whole argument breaks up.' The argu
ment, however, does not break up because thought
is suppressed. Rather we say that thought is
lifted into the higher region of imaginative reason.
4 Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen.' It is, as has been
finely said, the shimmer of the distant jasper towers

58 Reunion in Eternity

of the City of God. We commend to those who wish
to see this subject worked out Professor Sneath's
admirable little book on The Mind of Tennyson.

ii

We come to a more difficult subject when we
track the onward progress of Tennyson's thought in
the poem. We must not press inferences too hard.
In Memoriam came into being by a piecemea
process. We know that some of the elegies date
from 1833, while others were written a dozen years
later. Dr. Bradley does not contend for any rigid
division of the poem into parts. He admits that
4 the content of some of the later sections implies a
greater distance of time from the opening of the
series than is suggested by the chronological
scheme.5 Also Tennyson himself late in life gave
a scheme of the poem to Mr. Knowles which varies
in one important point from that of Dr. Bradley.
It is, however, quite certain, in spite of Tennyson's
forgetfulness, that in the final form In Memoriam
is intended to cover an ideal period of something less
than three years. The changes in the poet's mind
are marked chiefly by the Christmas sections, but

The Reunion of Souls : Tennyson 59

also by other recurring seasons and anniversaries.
There are other points also which may be described
as certain : —

1. The poet himself tells us that the divisions
are made by the Christmastide sections xxviii.,
Ixxviii., civ. The time said to elapse in the poem
may be set down at rather less than three years.
It may be said hi passing that Tennyson may have
meant to assign a span to grief, and there are other
suggestions of the same kind. But it is with his
general thinking that we are concerned. If the
reader will follow the divisions as made by Dr.
Bradley, he will see how the poet conceives the
' Way of the Soul.' In sections i. to xxvii. — up
to the first Christmas — we have the first part, for
a space of three months, assigned to absorption
in grief, looking back upon years of friendship,
affirming that love should survive the loss of the
beloved, but with little reference to the continued
existence of the lost friend.

2. In the second part — sections xxviii. to Ixxvii. —
the idea of the continued life of the dead is very
prominent, and the question of future reunion is
raised. The remembrance of the early life in the
world beyond death is strongly affirmed. There

60 Reunion in Eternity

is a passionate desire for the nearness of the dead
companion.

3. The next part, to the third Christmas — Ixxviii.
to ciii. — deals with the possible contact of the
living and the dead, apparently realised in a trance
— xcv. The tone is that of quiet and not unhappy
retrospection, and there is a sense of new and joyful
life beginning to show itself.

4. In the last part, from the third Christmas-
sections civ. to cxxxi. — the poet wins his victory.
The regret passes away, but love grows and widens.
The poet resolves to turn from the grief of the past
The sections are full of faith in the future, both of
the individual and of humanity. The poet has
won his way to entire faith in the omnipotence of
love. His conclusion is that souls may unite and
will unite perfectly when each is beyond death.
Meanwhile love is not less but greater than before.
It changes, but it does not perish or fade. It has
become spiritual and transfigured. At the begin
ning love desires the lost friend unchanged and
entire. It longs for the material manifestations,

4 the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.'

The soul shrinks from thinking of a phantom, ' a

The Reunion of Souls : Tennyson 61

spirit and not a breathing voice/ instead of the
human-hearted man he loved. But gradually
the soul conquers sense. It is released from the
desire for that which is really dead, and turns to
that which is not dead. The interest in the beloved
is transferred from the sensible presence to the
soul itself, and ' the soul is no longer thought of as
a mere awful phantom, but has become what the
living friend has been, something both beloved and
loving.' The beauty of the beloved soul is to be
seen in a life that can be but dimly imagined.
The haunting desire for the bodily presence retires,
and the feeling that the soul of the dead is something
shadowy and awful departs for ever. This releases
the mourner from his preoccupation and his sorrow.
He can interest himself in other things, in new
friendships, in the sweetness of the spring, in the
mighty hopes for man's future.

We have so far closely followed the wise guidance
of Dr. Bradley, generally using his own words. One
important aspect, however, of the question he has
not handled, and we must deal with it in our next
chapter. It is a great thing when the soul is content
with spiritual reunion, which means immediate and
conscious reunion after death.

IX

MORNWARD: THE REUNION OF
SOULS

WE return to the teaching of In Memoriam on
certain questions affecting the reunion of souls.

i

There are firm believers in immortality and
reunion who hold the doctrine that the soul h
asleep in the interval between death and the
resurrection. As consciousness is lost while thai
period lasts there is no weariness of waiting. The
fire of the divine life is quenched in death till it is
relit on the Resurrection Day. Uncounted years
may pass ere the consummation, but they pass in
a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

Against this view the Church as a whole has
decisively pronounced. It is true that one of the
most subtle exponents of the Christian redemption,
Dora Greenwell, inclined to hold it. In her prose

Mornward : The Reunion of Souls 63

works, however, she has little to say on human
sorrow, and much on human sin and the atoning
merits of Christ. Writing on the Resurrection she
says : 4 How much has the human heart gained in
the One revelation, which enables it to say, " I
believe in the resurrection of the body " ; that gives
the flesh also leave " to rest in hope." It is this
belief which brings with it all that is actual and
personal into our future life ; all, too, that is
homely and familiar ; that gives us back our
friends, looking and talking as they did here ; gives
us back our feelings and occupations, in fact, our
lives. For the body is, after all, the home of the
soul, endeared, even like the actual home, by the
very sorrows that have been endured within it ;
and we can conceive of nothing entered upon in
separation from it that is worthy to be called
life.'

It should, however, be remembered that mind
does not depend on matter. God Himself is a
pure Spirit, and man as a spirit is of the same
nature. The soul is active and conscious when
absent from the body and present with the Lord.
The personal individual existence of the soul is
continued after the death and dissolution of the

64 Reunion in Eternity

body. The drift of the New Testament is plain.
The souls that are passed from us do not sink at
death into a lower stage of existence than that
which they enjoyed in the flesh. ' To-day shalt
thou be with Me in Paradise,' were Christ's words
to the penitent thief. When St. Paul said th^t
he had a desire to c depart and to be with Chris.:,
which is very far better,' he contemplated his
passage into a more exalted state. As soon as h?
departed he was with Christ in a more blessed,
intimate and near association than while he was t
pilgrim on earth. Jeremy Taylor says : ' Paradise
is distinguished from the heaven of the blessed ;
being itself a receptacle of holy souls, made illustri
ous with visitation of angels, and happy by being
a repository for such spirits, who, at the day of
judgment, shall go forth into eternal glory.' Again
he says : c I have now made it as evident as ques
tions of this nature will bear, that in the state of
separation the spirits of good men shall be blessed
and happy souls.'

There is one piece in In Memoriam where for a
moment Tennyson seems to incline towards a
belief in the interval of unconsciousness. We
quote xliii. :—

Mornward : The Reuniont of Souls 65

' If Sleep and Death be truly one,
And every spirit's folded bloom
Thro' all its intervital gloom
In some long trance should slumber on ;

Unconscious of the sliding hour,
Bare of the body, might it last,
And silent traces of the past

Be all the colour of the flower ;

So then were nothing lost to man ;
So that still garden of the souls
In many a figured leaf enrolls

The total world since life began ;

And love will last as pure and whole
As when he loved me here in Time,
And at the spiritual prime

Re waken with the dawning soul.'

Tennyson's own commentary must be given :—

4 If the immediate life after death be only sleep,
and the spirit between this life and the next should
be folded like a flower in a night slumber, then the
remembrance of the past might remain, as the
smell and colour do in the sleeping flower ; and in
that case the memory of our love would last as
true, and would live pure and whole within the
spirit of my friend until it was unfolded at the

E

66 Reunion in Eternity

breaking of the morn, when the sleep we,s
over.'

Surely the ' spiritual prime ' is the dawn of the
Resurrection ! But the thought is no integral
or essential part of his intuitions and arguments.
He feels the need of present possession. He is
assured that his friend is the object of a personal
love. He looks to an immediate contact of soub
without appealing to sense. The thought that
while he was travelling through a long tract of
years his friend's spirit was buried in a deep slumber
would be impossible for him. He lived and loved
and waited for a reunion, but something of the
reunion was vouchsafed to him as he continued in
the pilgrim's way.

ii

Mr. A. C. Benson, in a little book on Tennyson,
argues that the poem is not Christian because it
has nothing to say about the Resurrection. ' There
is,' says Mr. Benson, ' no allusion hi the whole
poem to the Resurrection, the cardinal belief of
Christianity, the very foundation-stone of Christian
belief ; the very essence of consolation, of triumph
over death, of final victory. It is impossible that

Mornward : The Reunion of Souls 67

one who was a Christian in the strictest sense
should not have recurred again and again to this
thought in a poem which deals from first to last
with death and hope.' In reply we would say,
again : God and Immortality are to the poet
matters not of proof but of faith. But is it not
true, as Canon Deane has pointed out, that the
Resurrection doctrine is implicit hi the poem ?
Take a stanza, from Ixxxiv., describing the meeting
of the two souls after death, when they would

' Arrive at last the blessed goal,
And He that died in Holy Land
Would reach us out the shining hand,
And take us as a single soul.'

This is the living act of the hand of Hun Who not
merely lived but ' died in Holy Land.' Does it not
involve the doctrine that He is risen ? There is
also the great poem beginning,

1 Strong Son of God, immortal Love.'

Was Tennyson ever in any doubt that Christ died,
and rose again, and sat down at the right hand of
God ? He surely held the essence of the faith in
the Resurrection, which is that Christ is conscious
and supreme. Tennyson's faith in the Resurrection

68 Reunion in Eternity

is expressed in various ways, perhaps most clearly
at the conclusion of the ' Holy Grail ' :

' In moments when he feels he cannot die,
And knows himself no vision to himself,
Nor the high God a vision, nor that One
Who rose again.'

Speaking of these last three lines Tennyson says
they are ' the (spiritually) central lines in ths
Idylls: The heart of it all is here—' that One Whi
rose again:

in

But the greatest service done by Tennyson tc
lonely and bereaved spirits is his noble insistence
on the individuality of God and the soul. He holds
the fundamental truth of personal religion, which is
that God presents Himself as Thou to me. The
wandering scholar, Thomas Davidson, who is on
such a point an unimpeachable witness, may be
quoted here. He points out that Tennyson repudi
ated the notion that at death the individual soul
loses its identity, 6 remerging in the general soul '
—a ' faith as yague as all unsweet.' ' It satisfies
neither hand nor heart. It teaches that the Infinite
and Absolute Being is utterly without form or

Mornward : The Reunion of Souls 69

determination, and all forms, or individuals, appear
ing in the universe are mere temporary illusions.
This doctrine, which leads men to seek the annihila
tion of Self, as a deluding phantasm, has several
times tried to insinuate itself into Western thought ;
for example, through the Arabs in the twelfth
century, and at present, in the form of Monism, and
as the outcome of physical science. Indeed, in all
cases the doctrine has its origin in thought carried
on in terms of physics. Against it the Church,
holding fast to the Aristotelian doctrine of the
eternity of forms, has always exerted herself to the
utmost, and for a very good reason. Since, in
mediaeval terminology, the rational or intellectual
soul is the " substantial form " of the body, if forms
are not eternal then the soul is not immortal. We
might almost say that herein lies the fundamental
distinction between the thought of the East and
that of the West.

"Eternal form shall still divide

The eternal soul from all beside,
And I shall know him when we meet."

In the spiritual world there will still be distinction
of persons, still fellowship, still love ; and however

yo Reunion in Eternity

far isolation may be lost, as souls enter into closer
union, it will be lost in light, not in darkness. As
St. Bernard puts it : " The substance (of the in
dividual) will remain, but in other form, other
glory, other power. ... So to be affected is to be
deified." '

This is the quintessence of the whole argument : —

* I shall know him when we meet.'

X

'LOVE BADE ME WELCOME'

THIS is perhaps all we know about the entrance
of our beloved into the everlasting doors. It
is enough. We should want no more. George
Herbert is not without some justification in carry
ing the story a little further to the speech of the
frail and trembling spirit to its Redeemer :—

' Love bade me welcome ; yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin,
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

" A guest," I answer'd, " worthy to be here " ;

Love said, " You shall be he."
" I, the unkind, ungrateful ? Ah, my dear,

I cannot look on Thee."
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

" Who made the eyes but I ? '"

There are some things which may be said with

71

72 Reunion in Eternity

absolute certainty about the experiences of the
> second life.

I

In the first place, the faithful soul is received by
Christ to the life which is all love. In spite of
the emphatic teaching of Scripture the Church as
a whole has not risen to the height of the great
declaration, ' God is Love.' Neither has it sung
with full conviction St. Paul's praise of charity.
But the higher teachers of the human race, and
even those who never formally identified them
selves with Christians, have said glorious things
and true things about the Love that masters Time
and gives of the radiance of its joy to those who
would otherwise go poor indeed. George Meredith
says in one of his strongest and most sinewy
passages :—

6 Is it any waste of time to write of love ? The
trials of life are in it, but in a narrow ring and a
fierier. You may learn to know yourself through
it, as you do after years of life, whether you are fit
to lift those that are about you, or whether you are
but a cheat and a load on the backs of your fellows.
The impure perishes, the inefficient languishes, the

' Love bade me welcome ' 73

moderate comes to its autumn of decay — these are
of the kind which aim at satisfaction to die of it
soon or late. The love that survives has strangled
craving ; it lives because it lives to nourish and
succour like the heavens.'

We can penetrate but a very little way into
Christ's manner of working and teaching with His
saints in Paradise. May we not suppose that He
teaches the redeemed to love God as they have never
loved Him before ? In one of his last articles Dr.
Marcus Dods said that very few religious writers
had a passionate love for God, and he put St.
Augustine higher than the rest in this respect.
But God Himself has made Christianity historic
in making Himself a Man. Our Blessed Lord,
as the poor Scotch girl said, was a real Man, and
lived a real life, and died a real death, and behold
He is alive for evermore ! As Dora Greenwell
has said, ' Everything in Christianity, even the
blessed Cross itself, stops too short, if we stop short
at it, and do not let it lead us back to the Fatter—
that righteous Father, Whom our Lord declared
that He alone knew, and would reveal to a world
that knows Him not. It often seems to me that
Christianity has still a great advance to make in

74 Reunion in Eternity

this direction ; when we consider the deep un
righteousness, such as slavery in its various forms,
still tolerated in many Christian countries, also in
almost all forms of political and commercial
thought, what a denial there is of the great primitive
principles of justice and morality.' Jesus will yet
show us the Father, and it shall suffice us. We shall
understand then, as we do not understand now,
what it meant for God the Father to give His
only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in
Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

We need not go over again the teaching of
Browning on the subject. We know that he was
a believer in the Incarnation and in Immortality
because he was a believer in Love. It is he who
teaches most clearly the sacrifice of true love and
its continuance hereafter. In the Being of God
the one essential fact that he finds is Love.

4 In youth I looked to these very skies,
And, probing their immensities,
I found God there, His visible power ;
Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense
Of the power, an equal evidence
That His love, there too, was the nobler dower.
For the loving worm within its clod
Were diviner than a loveless god
Amid his worlds, I dare to say.'

* Love bade me welcome ' 75

We content ourselves with quoting the familiar
and grand lines in Saul, which describe the entrance
into heaven and the meeting with God :

4 Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for ! my

flesh, that I seek
In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul,

it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like

to me
Thou shalt love and be loved by for ever : a Hand

like this hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See

the Christ stand ! '

II

We will mention next the blessed promise of
Rest which Christ made in His earthly life and has
fulfilled for many even in this world of fear and
care. But it will be more perfectly and absolutely
the joy of the blessed. Somehow this conception
of Rest has dropped out lately, and yet if we told
the full truth to one another should we not confess
that nothing is so good as rest ? Think of the
unrest which for years has been tearing at our
hearts. Think of the difficult and impoverished
life which so many have to lead. Think what
multitudes are so sick of war that they would

76 Reunion in Eternity

almost throw up their arms and yield in any
circumstances. Even in the normal course of the
world most men come home from their work tired
to find their wives tired. There is a great deal of
courage in the human heart, and it is certain tha :
Christ succours those who pray. And yet the
promise of rest is very sweet.

Let us understand what rest is. Rest is not
mere inaction. It is not realised by those whose
simple longing is to escape. No, that is not what
was promised by Christ. Rest is not mere negative
repose, but positive, fulfilled calm and satisfaction.
Henry Drummond has written truly and beautifully
about Christian rest :

' It is only when we see what it was in Him that
we can know what the word Rest means. It lies
not in emotions, nor in the absence of emotions.
It is not a hallowed feeling that comes over us in
church. It is not something that the preacher has
in his voice. It is not in nature, nor in poetry,
nor in music — though in all these there is soothing.
It^ is the mind at leisure from itself. It is the
perfect poise of the soul ; the absolute adjust
ment of the inward man to the stress of all outward
things ; the preparedness against every emergency ;

* Love bade me welcome ' 77

the stability of assured convictions ; the eternal
calm of an invulnerable faith ; the repose of a
heart set deep in God. It is the mood of the man
who says with Browning, " God 's in His Heaven,
all 's right with the world." '

If the new country is the world of Love and Rest
many things follow. There will be the love of
human beings to one another. There will be their
love to God. There will be praise, for that will
be the appropriate speech of the soul in the im
mediate keeping of Jesus. ' Unto Him that loved us,
and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and
hath made us kings and priests unto God and His
Father ; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and
ever. Amen.' Needless to say also there will be
such exercise of the strengthened and calmed
faculties as God sees good. Still the redeemed
will look beyond and beyond to the Beatific Vision
of God — which we can name indeed, but beyond
naming can do no more.

XI
DANTE AND REUNION

' Beatrice is gone up into high Heaven,
The kingdom where the angels are at peace ;
And lives with them/

La Vita

Dante, in the Vita Nuova, thus imagined his lady's heavenly
state : —

' But from the height of woman's fairness, she,
Going up from us with the joy we had,
Grew perfectly and spiritually fair ;
That so she spreads even there
A light of Love which makes the angels glad.
And even unto their subtle minds can bring
A certain awe of profound marvelling.' l

' Look thou into the pleasure wherein dwells
Thy lovely lady who is in Heaven crown'd,
Who is herself thy hope in Heaven, the while
To make thy memory hallow'd, she avails ;
Being a soul within the deep Heaven bound,
A face on thy heart painted, to beguile
Thy heart of grief which else should turn it vile.
Even as she seem'd a wonder here below,

On high she seemeth so, —
Yea, better known, is there more wondrous yet,

And even as she was met

1 Rossetti's translation.

78

Dante and Reunion 79

First by the angels with sweet song1 or smile,
Thy spirit bears her back upon the wing,
Which often in these ways is journeying.'

Cino da Pistoia to Dante Alighieri on the death
of Beatrice Portinari. (llossetti's translation.)

' This realm secure and all its gladsomeness,
Crowded with ancient people and with modern,
Unto one mark had all its look and love.
O Trinal Light, that in a single star
Sparkling upon their sight so satisfies them,
Look down upon our tempest here below ! ' l

'I know not in the world,' says Carlyle, ' an affection equal
to that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a trembling, longing,
pitying love: like the wail of iEolian harps, soft, soft; like a
child's young heart; — and then that stern, sore-saddened heart!
These longings of his towards his Beatrice; their meeting
together in the Paradiso ; his gazing in her pure, transfigured
eyes, her that had been purified by death so long, separated from
him so far : — one likens it to the song of angels ; it is among
the purest utterances of affection, perhaps the very purest, that
ever came out of a human soul.' 2

THE Divina Commedia is a poem of recognition, and
in its later stages of reunion. Scarcely has Dante
crossed the threshold of the unseen when he is met
by Virgil, the master and guide of his youth. Virgil
appears as a messenger from Beatrice. The lady
throned in Paradise has remembered her faithful
lover on earth, and has sent him a deliverer. She

1 Dante's Paradiso, Canto xxxi.

2 Heroes and Hero- Worship.

8o Reunion in Eternity

has left her place in Heaven beside the ancient
Rachel, and has laid her commands on the Latin
poet. For Dante's sake she entered the dark
portals of the Inferno 4 with no dread.'

4 1 am so fram'd by God, thanks to His grace !
That any suff'rance of your misery
Touches me not, nor flame of that fierce fire
Assails me.' 1

This was her message to Virgil :—

c O courteous shade of Mantua ! thou whose fame
Yet lives, and shall live long as nature lasts !
A friend, not of my fortune, but myself,
On the wide desert in his road has met
Hindrance so great, that he through fear has turn'd.
Now much I dread lest he past help have stray'd,
And I be ris'n too late for his relief,
From what in Heav'n of him I heard. Speed now,
And by thy eloquent persuasive tongue,
And by all means for his deliverance meet,
Assist him. So to me will comfort spring.
I who now bid thee on this errand forth
Am Beatrice.' 2

In the first circle of the Inferno Dante meets the
greatest poets of the ancient world, and is accepted
by them as an equal. He is united with the wise,
the learned, and the virtuous, in the Limbo of the

1 Gary's translation, Inferno, Canto ii, 2 Ibid.

Dante and Reunion 81

unbaptized. He discourses with Homer, Horace,
Ovid, and Lucan, 'on the green enamel of a meadow,'
protected by the battlements of a seven-walled,
seven -gated stronghold.

* They turn'd to me, with salutation kind
Beck'ning me ; at the which my master smil'd :
Nor was this all ; but greater honour still
They gave me, for they made me of their tribe ;
And I was sixth amid so learn'd a band.'

Dante, a pilgrim in Limbo, moves as friend and
comrade, with ' solemn troops and sweet societies.'
Far different is the scene in the second circle, where
he meets the shades of Paolo and Francesca ; yet
to them he accords the comfort of reunion, though
as lost wind-beaten spirits.

Dr. Moore remarks that Dante may have felt
the tie of personal affection to Francesca, or at
least that of friendship and gratitude to her family.
4 Besides this too, there would be a strong palliation
for her fault to be found in the shameful deception
that had been practised upon her, and in her sincere,
and from the first, most natural devotion and
fidelity to Paolo. Dante might well plead for her
in such language as that of Wordsworth :

' " Ah ! judge her gently who so deeply loved."
F

82 Reunion in Eternity

And so it is permitted to these faithful lovers that
even " in death they are not divided." ' l

In his wanderings through the Inferno, Dante
is often stirred with pity for the ' kindred shades,'
some of whom, like his honoured teacher, Brunette >
Latini, desire personal talk with him. Farinatn
rises from his tomb to address a fellow-Tuscan :—

4 On his face was mine

Already fix'd : his breast and forehead there
Erecting, seem'd as in high scorn he held
E'en hell.'

Haughtily he demands of the poet :— -
4 Say, what ancestors were thine ? '

and the feuds of earth are renewed in the land oi
sorrow.

4 1, willing to obey him, straight reveal'd
The whole, nor kept back aught : whence he, his brow
Somewhat uplifting, cried : " Fiercely were they
Adverse to me, my party and the blood
From whence I sprang : twice therefore I abroad
Scattered them." " Though driv'n out, yet they

each time

From all parts," answered I, " returned ; an art
Which yours have shown they are not skilPd to
learn." '

1 Studies in Dante, 2nd series, pp. 217, 218.

Dante and Reunion 83

At these words, another lost soul, Cavalcante, a
noble Florentine of the Guelph party, lifts himself
from the sepulchre, leaning upon his knees, and asks
the piteous question :—

' " If thou through this blind prison go'st
Led by thy lofty genius and profound,
Where is my son ? and wherefore not with thee ? "

At Dante's use of the past tense in referring to
his son Guido, Cavalcante fell ' supine, nor after
forth appear'd he more.' The pilgrim bids Farinata
assure the stricken father that Guido is still among
the living. Carlyle says on this famous passage :
' And how Farinata rises ; and how Cavalcante falls
at hearing of his son, and the past tense " fue " ! '

In the ' Second Kingdom ' of Purgatory, Dante
hears familiar voices from the banks of Arno, and
listens to the strains of old remembered music.
Very beautiful is the account of his meeting with
Casella. Scarcely has the Angel-Pilot landed the
boatload of blessed souls who have awaited him at
Tiber's mouth, when one of the shades rushes
forward towards the poet : —

4 Then one I saw darting before the rest
With such fond ardour to embrace me, I
To do the like was moved. O shadows vain

84 Reunion in Eternity

Except in outward semblance ! Thrice my hands

I clasped behind it, they as oft returned

Empty into my breast again. Surprise

I needs must think was painted in my looks,

For that the shadow smiPd and backward drew !

To follow it I hasten'd, but with voice

Of sweetness it enjoined me to desist.

Then who it was I knew, and pray'd of it,

To talk with me, it would a little pause.

It answered : " Thee as in my mortal frame

I lov'd, so loosed from it I love thee still,

And therefore pause ; but why walkest thou here ? '

Dante begs his friend to comfort him with song : —

1 Then I : "If new laws have not quite destroyed
Memory and use of that sweet song of love,
That whilom all my cares had pow'r to 'suage :
Please thee with it a little to console
My spirit, that incumbered with its frame,
Travelling so far, of pain is overcome."
" Love that discourses in my thoughts," he then
Began in such soft accents, that within
The sweetness thrills me yet.'

Virgil and all who listen are entranced, but Cato
drives the spirits forward towards the Mount of
Purification.

Among the Indolent, Dante meets another
acquaintance, the maker of musical instruments,
Belacqua. He asks why the old man is lingering

Dante and Reunion 85

on the upward way. Belacqua, who has been
taking a siesta with other lazy ones in the shadow
of a rock, gives the following answer : —

4 Brother, what avails it to go up ?
Since the Bird of God who sits up at the gate
To the torments would not let me go.
First must the heaven circle round me
Outside of it, so long as in my life it did.
Because I postponed the good sighs to the end :
Unless ere that prayer gives me help
Which rises from a heart that lives in grace ;
What profits other that in heaven is heard not ? '

One of the dark thoughts which haunted the
imagination of Dante was that of the possible
separation of near relatives in the unseen world.
There are two well-known examples at the beginning
of the Purgatorio. Manfred, King of Apulia and
Sicily, a man stained on earth with many crimes,
appears among the penitents of the last hour. He
was excommunicated by the Church, but at the
final moment, when mortally wounded in battle,
he repented and gave himself to God.

4 Infinite Goodness hath such ample arms
That it receives whate'er turns back to it.'

Manfred was a natural son of the Emperor
Frederick n., whose place is in a fiery tomb in the

86 Reunion in Eternity

Inferno. He lies among the heretics in the City
of Dis. Manfred does not name his father to
Dante, but claims kinship rather with his grand
mother, the Empress Constance, whose home is in
the Heaven of the Moon.

We may mention also the case of Buonconte, son
of Count Guido of Montefeltro. The Count made
his peace with the Church, and on the approach of
old age joined the Franciscan Order. St. Francis
came to meet him at his death, but a Black Cherub
snatched the soul away, with the warning words :—

4 Who repents not cannot be absolved,
Nor can one repent and will at once,
Because of the contradiction which consents not.'

Guido's doom is described in Canto xxvu. of
the Inferno. Buonconte, the son, was struck down
in battle. Unlike his father, he repented truly.
4 One little tear ' had virtue to save him from the
powers of evil.

Ties of home and country link spirits who meet
for the first time in the realm of shadows. As an
example, take Sordello's meeting with Virgil at the
entrance to the Dell of Princes. The 4 Lombard
spirit ' stdod 4 in high, abstracted mood,' moving

Dante and Reunion 87

with slow dignity his eyes. Virgil asks him to show
the best ascent.

4 It answer to his question none returned,
But of our country and our kind of life
Demanded. When my courteous guide began,
" Mantua," the solitary shadow quick
Rose towards us from the place in which it stood
And cried, " Mantuan ! I am thy countiyman
Sordello." Each the other then embraced.'

' Seven times the courteous greetings were exchanged.'

Dante's friend, Nino Visconti, recognises the
poet in the Dell of Princes. He converses with the
poet on the second marriage of his wife, Beatrice
d'Este, and asks that his nine-year-old daughter,
Giovanna, should pray for him. The meeting
between the two men is tenderly pictured :—

* Only three steps down
Methinks I measured, ere I was beneath,
And noted one who looked as with desire
To know me. Time was now that air grew dim :
Yet not so dim, that 'twixt his eyes and mine
It cleared not up what was concealed before.
Mutually towards each other we advanced.
Nino, thou courteous judge ! what joy I felt.
When I perceived thou wert not with the bad !
No salutation kind on either side
Was left unsaid.' l

1 Gary's translation.

Reunion in Eternity

On the terrace of Pride the poet meets the
illuminator, Odorisi, who adorned many books for
the Pope's library. The artist, though bowed down
and twisted beneath the heavy weight which is
borne by such penitents, ' saw me, knew me straight,
and called.' Dante stoops low and becomes a
companion of his way. The art of painting, like
that of music, concerns its votaries in the invisible
world, and Odorisi talks of pupils and rivals left
on earth.

A remarkable case is that of Forese Donati, whom
Dante recognises by his voice on the terrace
where gluttony is punished by fasting. The faces
of the penitents are so macerated by suffering that
the wanderer does not know his old companion.
Forese was a kinsman of Dante's wj£e Gemma, and
had been dead five years.

4 By his looks

I ne'er had recognised him : but the voice
Brought to my knowledge what his cheer concealed.'

Forese turns his eyes in their deep-sunken cells,
and fastens them on Dante, who had expected
to find him far lower down, among the penitents
of the last hour. The spirit explains that it was
through the intercessions of his wife, Nella, that

Dante and Reunion 89

he had come thus far on the purgatorial way. The
friends talk long together. Dante asks what has
become of Piccarda, Forese's sister, and learns that
she already has her place in Paradise. He meets
her afterwards in the Heaven of the Moon.

At parting Forese asks : c When shall I again
behold thee ? ' and the poet answers :—

' How long my life may last I know not.
This know, how soon soever I return
My wishes will before me have arrived.'

DANTE AND BEATRICE

We come now to Dante's meeting with Beatrice
in the Earthly Paradise at the Summit of the Mount
of Pain. The wisest interpreters of the Divina
Commedia are convinced that the lady who met
him was a human personality as well as a symbolic
figure.

That learned Dantist, Dr. Edward Moore, has
unhesitatingly asserted his belief that the Beatrice
of the Divina Commedia was a real woman, the
circumstances and incidents of whose life were
substantially such as the poet has recorded in the
Vita Nuova. She actually lived and moved

90 Reunion in Eternity

' among the Christians of the thirteenth century.'
Dante's first meeting with her, when she was eight
and he was nine years old, ' fell like a spark on
highly inflammable materials already prepared,
and we need not therefore marvel so much " how
great a fire a little matter kindled."

' It is surely quite inconceivable,' says Dr. Moore,
4 if Beatrice were a mere abstraction — an ideal, a
symbol, and nothing more — that Dante should
have assigned her a definite place in Heaven, and
indeed a most exalted place, treating her as a human
soul, and associating her with none but absolutely
real and historic personages, though many of them
are subjected to allegorical treatment in quite as
high a degree as herself.' l

It is a real woman, no theological abstraction,
who says to her faithful lover : ' Look at me well—
I, even I, am Beatrice.'

4 Nowhere,' says Dean Church, ' has the rapture
of long-waited-for joy been told in such swift and
piercing accents as in the story of the moment in
which Beatrice reveals her presence :

' " Guardami ben — ben son, ben son Beatrice."

1 Studies in Dante, 2nd series, p. 141.

Dante and Reunion 91

These words remain true, even though the first
task of Beatrice is that of rebuke and impeach
ment.

Mr. Gardner says in his book, Dante's Ten
Heavens : 4 When the spiritual guide has done her
work . . . allegory practically ceases, and the real
woman is enthroned in the glory she has merited.'
And again : ' Passages that can only refer to the
real woman . . . break in, as it were, in the alle
gorical narrative, like the wedding music into the
story of the Ancient Mariner, giving an air of reality
and truth to the whole.'

In the Convito Dante thus pictures the recep
tion of holy souls :—

4 And as to him who comes from a long journey,
before he enters into the gates of his city, the
citizens thereof go forth to meet him, so to meet
the noble soul go forth those citizens of the eternal
Life.'

On the final terrace of Purgatory, amidst the
torturing flame, Virgil supported his companion by
discoursing of Beatrice : ' Already I seem to see her
eyes.' When Beatrice is about to descend into the
Chariot of the Church, the elder who represents
the writings of Solomon cries three times : * Veni,

92 Reunion in Eternity

Sponsa, de Libano ' — ' Come, O Bride, from Lebanon '
— all the others repeating it after him. In the Vita
Nuova Dante had a vision of his Lady dead, ' whose
head certain ladies seemed to be covering with a
white veil.'

4 That dream of death,' says Dr. Carroll, ' is here
changed into a vision of eternal life. Beatrice is
about to return, transfigured and glorified. The
white veil is still upon her head, but it is now a
bridal veil, and circled round with green olive leaves
of the hope and peace and wisdom of eternity.
She " descends out of heaven from God, prepared
as a bride adorned for her husband " ; and the
Angels that once carried her white soul up with
Osannas, now scatter clouds of flowers to welcome
her return.'

When the words of welcome are spoken, ' Blessed
art thou that comest,' and ' O give lilies with full
hands,' ' the underlying thought, or rather emotion,
is the great mystery of death in which Dante's
spirit had dwelt ever since, nearly ten years before,
" the very gentle Beatrice " had passed away, and
left the city solitary. ... If, as Plumptre says,
Dante saw "lilies scattered on the grave of Beatrice,"
the line must then have sprung instinctively into

Dante and Reunion 93

his mind, and probably with all the Virgilian melan
choly in which it was written. The melancholy
is now past. The great Christian doctrine of im
mortality is revealed. The lilies are scattered with
full hands, not now for the death of Beatrice, but
for her life, transfigured and glorified. Everything
speaks of life ; the flowers, the " ministers and
messengers of life eternal," the comparison of them
to the saints rising from their tombs singing
Alleluia: *

Dr. Paget Toynbee has pointed out that, although
Beatrice is named sixty-three times in the Divina
Commedia, on no occasion does Dante address her
by name. He is addressed by her only once by
name ; on other occasions she calls him, frate,
4 brother.'

Dante can see his glorified Lady at first only
underneath a veil. His passage from heaven to
heaven of Paradise is marked by the increasing
beauty of her eyes and smile. He received the
answer to his prayer : 2 ' May it please Him who
is the Lord of courtesy that my soul may go to
behold the glory of its lady, that is, that blessed

1 Prisoners of Hope, p. 434.

2 Vita Nuova.

94 Reunion in Eternity

Beatrice who gloriously gazes on the face of Him
Who is blessed throughout all ages. Praise to
God.'

REUNION IN PARADISE

On the general subject of reunion in Dante's
Paradise, we may quote two passages from
Hettinger :

6 While the mental joy which the blessed derive
from the Beatific Vision is unchangeable, their
accidental joy (Beatitudo accidentalis) is increased
in three ways. First, being all united in the charity
of God, they mutually rejoice in each other's joy,
and their happiness increases with every one that
enters Heaven.'

Hettinger quotes in proof the words :—

4 As in a quiet and clear lake the fish
If aught approach them from without, do draw
Towards it, deeming it their food ; so drew
Full more than thousand splendours towards us,
And in each one was heard : " Lo ! one arrived
To multiply our loves ! " And as each came
The shadow, streaming forth effulgence new
Witness'd augmented joy.' l

1 Father Bowden's translation of Hettinger's book on the
Divina Commedia.

Dante and Reunion 95

Again, Hettinger says :—

' As earthly things, by manifesting the Divine
power and wisdom, raise our thoughts to God, so
the contemplation of the blessed in Heaven is a
preparation for the sight of Him in His essence.'

St. Bernard says to Dante (Par. xxxi. 88) :

4 That thou at length mayst happily conclude
Thy voyage (to which end I was despatched,
By supplication mov'd and holy love)
Let thy upsoaring vision range, at large,
This garden through ; for so, by ray divine
Kindled, thy ken a higher flight shall mount.'

If there are few references in the Paradiso to the
recognition of earthly friends, the explanation is
that the souls in the higher heavens appear in the
form of stars. The personal self is lost in the
divine radiance. In the sphere of Mars, ruled by
the Virtues, Dante meets his ancestor Cacciaguida,
and hears him discourse on the ruin of Florence.
In the Empyrean, Beatrice herself leaves him and
yields place to St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

4 1 thought to see Beatrice, and saw an old man
Clad in the vesture of the folk in glory.'

Beatrice has resumed her throne in the Rose of
the Blessed, and has sent Bernard, as she once sent

96 Reunion in Eternity

Virgil, to direct her friend. Dante looks upward
and beholds his loved one crowned with the eternal
rays. He pours out hi a final prayer some broken
words of gratitude.

' And she, so far away

As she appeared, smiled and looked back on me ;
Then unto the Eternal Fountain turned.'

XII

TEACHING OF LUTHER AND
MELANCHTHON

IN studying the correspondence of Luther and
Melanchthon we observe a marked difference in
their attitude towards reunion. Luther's letters
of consolation are surprisingly rare, and his
language is apt to be stilted and conventional.
Only in a few cases does the tenderness of his great
heart flow out towards the bereaved. His reticence
may be explained by the circumstances of his life.
He was brought up in a narrow home, under the
harsh rule of parents before whom he trembled
like a leaf. A modern biographer suggests that
his nervous system was permanently injured by
the severity of his treatment at home and at school.
Then came long years of monastic and university
life, and it was not till the age of forty-two that he
experienced the joys of family intercourse. His
correspondence is occupied with theological matters,

G

98 Reunion in Eternity

details of Church government, public affairs in
general. We doubt whether more than twenty
letters intended simply for condolence have been
discovered by his diligent editors. Among these
we find a direct reference to reunion in the message
sent to Justus Jonas on the death of his wife, a
lady much beloved, who passed away in 1542.
Luther bids his friend remember that ' although
according to the flesh we are divided by a separation
very hard to bear, yet one day in the heavenly life
we shall see each other, joined together in a blessed
union, and gathered unto Him who so loved us that
by His own blood and death He prepared that life
for His people.' l

The Reformer knew little of the sharpness of
personal bereavement, and he did not allow his
thoughts to linger on images of death and sorrow.2
His aged father passed away in 1530, when Luther
was living in retreat at Coburg. His companion,
Veit Dietrich, tells that he took his Psalter and

1 Enders-Kawerau edition of Luther's Correspondence, vol. xv.
(1914), p. 48. This was the last volume published before the
war.

2 Dr. Kawerau comments on the striking fact that although
he wrote to Jonas three days after the date of the letter quoted
above, he made no further allusion to the removal of the house
mother, who left behind her a flock of little ones,

Teaching of Luther and Melanchthon 99

retired into his chamber to weep in solitude. On
the next day, although suffering from headache,
he showed no further trace of mourning. His
letters of the time express a true reverence for his
father, and a surprising warmth of affection, but
the thought uppermost in his mind was that he
himself now stood in the front rank of his genera
tion. ' I inherit his name, and am almost the
eldest Luther in our family.' He owed much to his
father, though he had much to forgive. Within
his own household, except for the death of his
infant Elizabeth in 1528, he was spared any personal
loss until, in September 1542, his favourite child,
Magdalena, was taken from him after a short
illness. His letters written to various friends
after her departure are well known through transla
tions in English biographies. We have not found
in any of them an expression of the hope of reunion
which he surely cherished. It was Melanchthon
who, in notifying the death of Magdalena to the
University, included these words, after inviting
the students to attend the funeral : ' Her soul
has been received into the arms of Christ and awaits
the glorious resurrection, in which she will again
most sweetly embrace her parents, as it is written,

ioo Reunion in Eternity

"It is not the will of your heavenly Father that
one of these little ones should perish." ' l

On the last evening of Luther's life, at the
supper-table in Eisleben, the conversation turned
on recognition in the heavenly state. He joined
in the talk, and the following are among his latest
recorded words : ' As Adam, when he awoke from
sleep, recognised the newly created Eve at once as
flesh of his flesh, through the power of the Spirit
of God which enlightened him, even so and far
better shall we, who have been renewed in Christ,
recognise one another there.'

If the hope of reunion gleams but seldom in the
letters of Luther, with Melanchthon, especially in
his middle and closing years, it was a theme of
constant meditation and increasing joy. He looked
beyond the narrow life of Wittenberg, with its
depressing climate, monotonous scenery, sleepless
nights and toilful days, to an early and certain
meeting with Old and New Testament heroes, and
with loved ones who had gone before. Principal

1 Enders-Kawerau, vol. xiv. p. 337. Although the notice for
the University blackboard bears the name of the Rector,
Aurogallus, it is well known that such official writings were
usually drawn up by Melanchthon, and here his hand is un
mistakable.

Teaching of Luther and Melanchthon 101

Lindsay said truly that ' humanism and delicate
clinging to the simple faith of childhood blended
in the exquisite character of Melanchthon.' * He
awaited, with childlike faith and hope, his own
entrance into the society of prophets and apostles,
evangelists and martyrs. Their names recur per
petually in his letters of consolation. The jealousy
of colleagues, the suspicions of a dull-witted
Elector, family sorrows, the privations of exile,
self-reproaches of his sensitive heart, were lost in
that light of glory within which he discoursed in
anticipation with Abraham and Isaiah, St. Paul
and St. John, and drank with them at the full-
flowing fountain of eternal wisdom.

Melanchthon is so pre-eminent among modern
religious teachers in his grasp of the doctrine of
reunion, that we need offer no apology for trans
lating a few relevant passages from the abundant
stores of his letters of condolence.

Writing to Osiander on the death of his wife,
he bids his friend remember that the lost one had
not perished by some chance stroke of fate, but had
in the wise purpose of God been called to immortal
life. ' She has been taken from us for a little while

1 History of the Reformation, vol. i. p. 156.

IO2 Reunion in Eternity

in order that ere long God may restore your com
panionship under far happier conditions. There
you will dwell in eternal light, and will talk most
lovingly of Him. That future union of pious
spouses will far surpass in happiness the sweetest
intercourse here on earth.' l

The death of a faithful preacher, Nicholas Haus-
mann, in 1538, brought sorrow to Luther and his
circle. Melanchthon wrote on the subject to a
mutual friend : 4 When I think of the death of
Master Nicholas, I feel just as when I am seeing
friends away who are about to travel to my home
land. Their departure reawakens my love for my
native place, and arouses in me the longing to
travel with them to more pleasant scenes. So the
death of good and pious men admonishes me of that
immortal life which awaits us, and stirs in me the
longing to travel with them to that eternal seat
and light, in which, without sin, error or darkness,
we shall delight in the wisdom of God.' 2

He wrote with tenderest sympathy to the
parents of undergraduates who had died of plague

1 Letter of August, 1537, Corpus Reformatorum, vol. iii. col.
406.

2 Corpus Reformat or uvi, vol. iii. col. 605.

Teaching of Luther and Melanchthon 103

or other maladies in the unwholesome atmosphere
of Wittenberg. A sorrowing father was reminded
that ' We are neither born nor called hence by
chance, but by the will of God. Jesus tells us that
not even a sparrow falls to the ground without our
Father. When my son died1 I found wonderful
comfort from these words, which caught my eyes
all of a sudden as I was turning over the Psalms :
It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves. How
great, too, is the comfort that you know your boy
died so piously that you will embrace each other
again in the blessed company of prophets, apostles,
and other holy men, where you will talk together
of the glory of God, which as a child he heard you
celebrate in words of praise.' 2

To another friend he wrote : — .,

4 Do not think you have lost your son. He lives
and bids you be at rest about him. He awaits
you joyfully in the better life where he will clasp
you again in his arms. His presence there will be

1 His baby George, who died in 1529. The loss of this lovely
and promising child was a lifelong sorrow to Melanchthon. It
was eleven years later, after an almost fatal illness at Weimar,
that he mentioned for the first time the text which had
comforted him.

2 Corpus Reformatorum, vol. iii. col. 1069.

104 Reunion in Eternity

far sweeter to you than when you carried him as
a baby in your bosom, and taught him to say his
letters ; or when in later years you found pleasure
in his talents and diligence. In a little while you
will hear him speaking of God, and of all those
things which the human mind was formed to under
stand. You will see him hi the company of
prophets and apostles, himself discoursing with
them.'

In the autumn of 1545 Melanchthon wrote to his
bosom friend Camerarius, who had lost a brother
by death : ' He lives with the Son of God, among
such heroes of the faith as Abraham, Joseph, David,
John the Baptist, Paul. Now he sees face to face
the judges of our divisions. He rejoices in talking
with his beloved parents and with the brother who
passed away before him. I hope to come much
sooner than you into that assembly. So little do
I dread the pilgrimage out of the prison of this
earthly life that whenever I think of our University,
I am filled with an indescribable yearning for that
heavenly school.'

In many other writings he alludes to the 'heavenly
academy,' where he hoped to enjoy the society and
instruction of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles.

Teaching of Luther and Melanchthon 105

' That future school rises before my mental vision
as often as I enter our schools, and never would I
consent to sever my judgment from that of those
illustrious teachers.'

In his memorial address on Luther this passage
occurs : ' Let us rejoice that he now holds that
familiar intercourse with God and His Son which, by
faith in the Son of God, he always sought and ex
pected. There, by the manifestations of God, and
by the testimony of the whole Church in heaven,
he not only hears the applause of his toils in the
service of the Gospel, but is also delivered from the
mortal body as from a prison, and has entered that
vastly higher school, where he can contemplate the
essence of God, the two natures joined in Christ,
and the whole purpose set forth in founding and
redeeming the Church. . . . We remember the
great delight with which he recounted the course,
the counsels, the perils and escapes of the Prophets,
and the learning with which he discoursed on all
the ages of the Church, thereby showing that he
was inflamed by no ordinary passion for these
wonderful men. Now he embraces them and re
joices to hear them speak and to speak to them in
turn. Now they hail him gladly as a companion,

io6 Reunion in Eternity

and thank God with him for having gathered and
preserved the Church.'

Melanchthon shared the view of Bismarck, that
without a firm faith in immortality it would be
almost impossible to bear up against the sorrows
of the earthly state. In the year 1548, at a time
of constant anxiety, he wrote these words : ' If we
did not know that this toilful life is a journey
towards the sweet society of the heavenly Church,
hi which God will manifest Himself to us in un
veiled beauty, and grant to us an eternal partici
pation in His light, wisdom, righteousness and joy,
who could or who would endure the countless pains
and conflicts of this life ? '

He said to his students about his early tutor,
John Unger : ' He was a good man. He loved me
as a son, and I him as a father. In a short time
we shall meet, I hope, in eternal life.'

Many other passages might be cited, in which the
same thoughts recur, but these quotations indicate
sufficiently the mind of the great scholar who was
honoured in his own day as 4 Praeceptor Germaniae.'
He was visiting Heidelberg in 1557, when Camer-
arius brought to him the news of his wife's death at
Wittenberg. Melanchthon had been received ' like

Teaching of Luther and Melanchthon 107

a god ' by the Protestants assembled at Worms ;
and at Heidelberg the Elector Palatine and the
whole community greeted him with extraordinary
demonstrations of affection. His brother George
came from Bretten to meet him. Camerarius
found his friend so happy that he postponed the
mournful announcement till the second day, when
the two were walking together in the Prince's
garden. Melanchthon received the tidings calmly.
Looking towards heaven, he said : ' Fare thee well,
I shall soon follow thee.'

His wish was realised less than three years later.
In April 1560 he was received into ' the quieter
Church.' His son-in-law and devoted physician,
Dr. Caspar Peucer, asked him towards the end
whether he wanted anything. ' Nothing else but
heaven,' he replied, 4 so trouble me no further.'

To those who have followed line by line his
voluminous correspondence, with its frequent men
tion of reunion, it is significant that his thoughts
at the very end were wholly centred upon God.
While the tertian fever was slowly consuming the
vremnants of his strength, he wrote on the left and
right margins of a sheet of paper the reasons why
he should not fear death. On the left side were the

io8 Reunion in Eternity

words, ' Thou shalt be freed from sin, from cares
and from the rage of the theologians.' On the
right side, ' Thou shalt come into the light. Thou
shalt see God. Thou shalt behold the Son of God
Thou shalt learn those wonderful mysteries which
in this life thou couldst not understand, as why
we were created as we are, and how the two natures
are made one in Christ.'

Keen and ardent as ever in the pursuit of know
ledge, Melanchthon passed into the unseen. He had
not forgotten his George and his Anna, his dear
wife and the young students who had been called
from earth before him. But the dying saint was
encompassed already by that lumen gloriae in which
God alone speaks to the soul and satisfies its desires.
St. Bona ventura, writing of the ecstatic union of
the soul with God, used words which would have
been echoed by this learned Grecian of the Reforma
tion age : ' In the transition, if it is to be perfect,
all intellectual activities must be abandoned and
the whole apex of affection transferred and trans
formed into God. But this is a most mystical and
most secret thing, which no one knows save him
who receives it, no one receives save him who
deserves it.'

PART II

TESTIMONIES IN REUNION
EARTHLY RELATIONSHIPS

The great scientist, Michael Faraday, wrote in old age to Hs
niece,, Mrs. Deacon: — 'I never heard of the saying that separation
is the brother of death ; I think that it does death an injustice,
at least in the mind of the Christian ; separation simply implies
no reunion ; death has to the Christian everything hoped for,
contained in the idea of reunion. I cannot think that death h is
to the Christian anything that should make it a rare, or oth ?r
than a constant thought ; out of the view of death comes the
view of the life beyond the grave, as out of the view of sin (th;it
true and real view which the Holy Spirit alone can give to a
man) comes the glorious hope; without the conviction of sin
there is no ground of hope to the Christian.'

Lord Tennyson tell us that his illustrious father said, shortly
before the end, ' The life after death, Lightfoot and I agreed, s
the cardinal point of Christianity. I believe that God revea s
Himself in every individual soul : and my idea of heaven is the
perpetual ministry of one soul to another.'

* There is nothing to convince a man of error, nothing i i
nature, nothing in scripture, if he believe that he shall know
those persons in heaven whom he knew (or whom any one else
knew) upon earth. If he conceive soberly that it were a less
degree of blessedness not to know them than to know them, h »
is bound to believe that he shall know them, for he is bound t >
believe that all that conduces to blessedness shall be given him.'—
JOHN DONNE.

THE FAMILY

'A man to get into heaven, which is simply a select family,
must have the family instinct at heart.' — HENRY DRUMMOND.

Lady Eastlake wrote in her diary on Good Friday, 1892 : — ' I
am happy as to the meeting again. Heaven would be no true
home if we did not find those who constitute our true home
here : household affections are sacred here, and must be there
too/ l

' To me God has promised not the heaven of the ascetic temper,
or the dogmatic theologian, or of the subtle mystic, or of the
stern martyr ready alike to inflict and bear ; but a heaven of
purified and permanent affections — of a book of knowledge with
eternal leaves^ and unbounded capacities to read it — of those
we love ever round us, never misconceiving us or being harassed
by us — of glorious -.vork to do and adequate faculties to doit.'

W. R. GREG.

IN a time of bereavement, when her own health
was rapidly failing, the saintly Quakeress, Elizabeth
Fry, was asked by Lady Buxton for her view of
the state after death. She answered, ' My mind
is that there is a tabernacle provided.' Such has
been the hope of our race from the remotest ages

1 Letters and Journal of Lady Eastlake, vol. ii. p. 307.

ill

H2 Reunion in Eternity

of its history. The coffin -texts of Egypt prove
that the dead expected rehabilitation of their house
and home. Above the dead man, as he lay in his
coffin, was inscribed a chapter which concerned
the building of a house in the Nether World,
digging a pool and planting fruit-trees. Another
text secured his occupancy, and a third sealed the
decree concerning the household, so that the humble
citizen should not be without companionship in the
world of shadows. An ancient sepulchral record
says : ' Geb, hereditary prince of the gods, has
decreed that there be given to me my household,
my children, my brothers, my father, my mothei,
my slaves, and all my establishment.' l

SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Sir Thomas Browne suspects ' a mixture of
bones ' in funeral urns. ' All urns contained not
single ashes ; without confused burnings they
affectionately compounded their bones ; passionately
endeavouring to continue their living unions. And
when distance of death denied such conjunctions.

1 Quoted by Professor Breasted, Development of Religion ana
Thought in Ancient Egypt, p. 280.

The Family 113

unsatisfied affections conceived some satisfaction
to be neighbours in the grave, to lie urn by urn,
and touch but in their names. And many were so
curious to continue their living relations, that they
contrived large and family urns, wherein the ashes
of their nearest friends and kindred might suc
cessively be received, at least some parcels thereof,
while their collateral memorials lay in minor vessels
about them.'

How different were these faint dreams from the
assurance of family reunion which we find in
Christian biographies ! We take a very few
examples from modern writers.

GEORGE HERBERT

George Herbert, as Izaak Walton tells us, cpm-
forted himself in his last illness with the thought of
reunion. His old friend, Mr. Woodnot, who came
from London to Bemerton to visit him on his
death-bed, was one of many who heard the poet
6 often speak to this purpose ' : ' My hope is,
that I shall shortly leave this valley of tears, and
be free from all fevers and pain ; and, which will
be a more happy condition, I shall be free from
sin, and all the temptations and anxieties that

H4 Reunion in Eternity

attend it : and this being past, I shall dwell in the
New Jerusalem ; dwell there with men made
perfect ; dwell where these eyes shall see my
Master and Saviour Jesus ; and with them see
my dear mother, and all my relations and friends.
But I must die, or not come to that happy place.
And this is my content, that I am going daily
towards it : and that every day which I have lived
hath taken a part of my appointed time from me ;
and that I shall live the less time for having lived
this and the day past.'

SIR WALTER SCOTT

In commenting on Anne of Geierstein, Lockhart
refers to rare scenes of the novel which offer evidence
that they are drawn by a grey-headed man ; and
to the author's sympathy with young lovers. The
whole of Sir Walter Scott's life, according to his
biographer, ' was too present to his wonderful
memory to permit of his brooding with exclusive
partiality, whether painfully or pleasurably, on
any one portion or phasis of it ; and besides, he
was always living over again in his children, young
at heart whenever he looked on them, and the world
that was opening on them and their friends. But

The Family 115

above all, he had a firm belief in the future reunion
of those whom death had parted.'

DR. NORMAN MACLEOD

' On one of the last days of his life, after the
funeral of a favourite nephew, Dr. Norman Macleod
talked with more than usual power — almost with
excitement — regarding the glorified life of those
who had departed in the Lord. He recalled the
names and characters of deceased relatives, and
described the joy of meeting and recognising them.
He spoke of his father, of James, of sisters and
uncles who were dead, and of John Mackintosh
(' The Earnest Student,' whose biography he had
written) ; and when one of the party chanced to
allude to their departure as loss, he vehemently
remonstrated against such a view. " Love is
possession, love is possession," he repeated.'

DR. JOHN KER

' When that world is all made up, there can, I
think, be no manner of doubt,' wrote Dr., John
Ker, ' that the ties of this world, purified and
ennobled, shall be renewed again. It is strange
that it should ever have been a question with

n6 Reunion in Eternity

Christians, " Shall we know one another in
heaven ? " It would not be heaven, that truly
human heaven, of which Christ is the centre, if
we did not.' x

' The farewells we bid now, blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord and Saviour, are not eternal
farewells,' wrote Dr. Ker in a letter of consolation,
4 but partings for a night when we retire to rest,
and we shall meet at morning, to know each other
and love each other with a knowledge and love of
which the best families of earth give us only faint
emblems. The members of the family go at
different times to rest, sometimes the youngest
first : but the Heavenly Father knows the tune
for us all, and shall bring us together without one
wanting at the happy day-dawn. It can be but
a brief separation at best, and then all our farewells
shall be changed into rapturous welcomes.' 2

DR. JOHN MACLEOD CAMPBELL

Dr. Macleod Campbell wrote to a friend on the
death of her granddaughter :—

6 We need to be comforted with everlasting con-

Letters, pp. 5, 6. 2 Ibid., p. 8.

The Family 117

solation because it is death that makes our tears
to flow. My little boy said to me lately, when I
was reading the twenty -third Psalm to him, " Papa,
when other persons die, and then we die, and then
we are all dead, then they cannot be taken from us
any more." I felt it sweet that the thought of
separation was thus obviously painful to him, and
that the thought of a condition in which there
would be no separation seemed pleasant to him.
It was nature that spoke in him. We were in
tended for dwelling together. Sin has introduced
separation ; but our hearts are not reconciled to
it ; and surely it is a part of the goodness of the
good news, " the Gospel," in which life and im
mortality are brought to light, that, while the
first fruit of redemption, and the highest, is that
we shall glorify God and enjoy Him for ever, this
also is its fruit that we shall eternally enjoy each
other in Him.'

CHARLES READE

In The Cloister and the Hearth, Father Clement
(Gerard) says to the Princess : ' Christians live " for
ever " and love " for ever," but they do not part
" for ever." They part as part the earth and sun,

n8 Reunion in Eternity

to meet more brightly in a little while. You and I
part here for life ; and what is our life ? Our life
in the great story of the Church, whose son and
daughter we are ; one handful in the sand of time,
one drop in the ocean of " for ever." Adieu for the
little moment called " a life." We part in trouble ;
we shall meet in peace. We part creatures of clay ;
we shall meet immortal spirits. We part in a world
of sin and sorrow ; we shall meet where all is
purity and love divine ; where no ill passions are,
but Christ is, and His Saints around Him clad in
white. There in the turning of an hour-glass, in
the breaking of a bubble, in the passing of a cloud,
she, and thou, and I shall meet again, and sit at
the feet of angels, apostles and saints and arch
angels, and learn like them with joy unspeakable,
in the light of the shadow of God upon His throne,
for ever and ever and ever.'

DR. MARTINEAU

Dr. Martineau says in his chapter on ' The Com
munion of Saints ' :—

' The Communion of Saints brings to us their
conflict first, their blessings afterwards ; those who
will not with much patience strive with the evil,

TJie Family 119

can have no dear fellowship with the good. . . .
We shall leave it to others to take up the supplicating
strain ; shall join the emancipated brotherhood of
the departed ; and in our turn look down on the
outstretched hands of our children, waiting our
welcome and embrace. O may the great Father,
in His own fit time, unite in one the parted family
of Heaven and Earth ! '

II

PARENTS AND CHILDREN

' David made his child's sickness his Lent, but his death his
Easter.' — JOHN DONNK.

' God never takes away any gift which He has once given to
His children.' — BISHOP PHILLIPS BROOKS (in a letter to bereaved
parents).

WE think first in this chapter of the consolations
offered to parents who have lost their infant-
children.

F. D. MAURICE.

F. D. Maurice wrote to his friend, R. C. Trench,
after the birth of a still-born child in his home :
' Our little infant was a girl, and I believe no one
who saw its marble face will think I am wrong in
saying that it spoke of life and character. I do not
know what the judgment of the Church is, but I
could not look upon it without believing that a
spirit had been within it, and that it was gone home
to its Father's house, and would one day come again
with Christ and His saints.' x

1 Life ofF. D. Maurice, vol. i. p. 265.

120

Parents and Children 121

DR. CHALMERS

In his lectures on the Romans, Dr. Chalmers
wrote :—

4 Should any parent who hears us feel softened
by the touching remembrance of a light that
twinkled a few short months under his roof, and at
the end of its little period expired — we cannot
think that we venture too far when we say that he
has only to persevere in the faith and in the follow
ing of the gospel, and that very light will again
shine upon him in heaven. The blossom which
withered here upon its stalk has been transplanted
there to a place of endurance, and it will then
gladden that eye which now weeps out the agony
of an affection that has been sorely wounded ; and
in the name of Him, who if on earth would have
wept along with them, do we bid all believers
present to sorrow not even as others which have
no hope, but to take comfort in the thought of that
country where there is no sorrow and no separation.

' " Oh, when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then, for pains and fears —
The day of woe, the watchful night—
For all her sorrow, all her tears,
An overpayment of delight ? "

122 Reunion in Eternity

D. L. MOODY

When D. L. Moody lost his infant grandson and
namesake, he wrote to the parents : ' I know
Dwight is having a good time, and we should rejoice
with him. What would the mansions be without
children ? He was the last to come into our circle,
and he is the first to go up there ! So safe, so free
from all the sorrow that we are passing through !
I do thank God for such a life. It was nearly all
smiles and sunshine, and what a glorified body he
will have, and with what joy he will await your
coming ! God does not give us such strong love
for each other but it is going to last for ever, and
you will have the dear little man with you for ages
and ages, and love will keep increasing. The
Master had need of him, or He would not have
called him ; and you should feel highly honoured
that you had anything in your home that He
wanted. ... I believe the only thing he took away
from earth was his sweet smile, and I have no doubt
that when he saw the Saviour he smiled as he did
when he saw you : and the word that keeps coming
to my mind is this : " It is well with the
child." '

Parents and Children 123

R. W. EMERSON.

In his dying hours Emerson spoke tenderly to
his wife of their life together, and her loving care
of him ; they must now part, to meet again and
part no more. Then he smiled and said/ Oh, that
beautiful boy ! '

Was he not thinking of a speedy reunion with
his son Waldo, known to the world through the
exquisite lines of the ' Threnody ' ?

CHARLES DICKENS

In Little Dorrit there is a well-known passage on
the yearning love of a parent towards a long-lost
infant. Mr. Meagles speaks as follows to Arthur
Clennam : ' Pet and her baby sister were so
exactly alike, and so completely one, that in our
thoughts we have never been able to separate them
since. It would be of no use to tell us that our dead
child was a mere infant. We have changed that
child according to the changes in the child spared
to us, and always with us. As Pet has grown, that
Child has grown ; as Pet has become more sensible
and womanly, her sister has become more sensible
and womanly, by just the same degrees. It would
be as hard to convince me that if I was to pass into

124 Reunion in Eternity

the other world to-morrow, I should not, through
the mercy of God, be received there by a daughter,
just like Pet, as to persuade me that Pet herself
is not a reality at my side.'

ARCHBISHOP BENSON

Bereaved parents have drawn comfort from the
thought that the little hands parted from their
own would be clasped by kind hands on the other
side. Archbishop Benson wrote to a friend who had
lost a baby girl called Monica : ' How very strange
that Monica should have been baptized on Saint
Augustine's day — so utterly unthought of, and
unimaginable when her name was chosen. Depend
on it the great Monica, the love of whom suggested
the name in all ways as much as if she had been a
living friend, only with more pity still towards her,
will not fail to know the little Monica. These
things are not dreams to me, and I know they are
not to you. How all earthly relations shift and
change in the shadow of eternity — " Commit our
dear sister to the ground," for you and for her
mother — and to find her an elder sister in Heaven,
many years older.' l

1 Life of Archbishop Renson, vol. i. p. 405.

Parents and Children 125

R. W. DALE

Dr. Dale, of Birmingham, was thirty-five when
he lost his daughter, Alice, a child of six. Three
years before his own death, he wrote to a friend who
had suffered a similar bereavement : ' I remember
very well when my child died, of whom I have
spoken ; it was many days before I could find any
reality in the life to which she had passed. The
discovery came curiously. I thought of a friend
who had loved her and whom she had loved, who
had died a few weeks before, and I said, " She is
with Mary Martin." The child was only six, and
I could not think of her alone even with God ; but
when I thought of the saintly woman to whom she
had been very dear, her life became very real to
me.'1

ARCHBISHOP AND MRS. TAIT

In her pathetic description of the last days of
the five little daughters lost at Carlisle, Mrs. Tait
tells how after the death of Chatty, the first victim
of the fever, the eldest of the five, ' Catty,' aged
ten, chose a hymn which all sang together, with

1 Life ofR. W. Dale, p. 622.

126 Reunion in Eternity

an earnestness of voice and manner which will not
soon be forgotten :—

" Here we suffer grief and pain,
Here we meet to part again,

In heaven we part no more.
Oh, that will be joyful,
Joyful, joyful, joyful !
Oh ! that will be joyful,

When we meet to part no more." ' x

In his diary for Thursday, May 8, 1856, Dean
Tait (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury) wrote :
c They are gone from us, all but my beloved Craufurd
and the babe. Thou hast reclaimed the lent jewels.
Yet, O Lord, how shall I not thank Thee now ? I
will thank Thee not only for the children Thou
hast left to us, but for those Thou hast reclaimed.
I thank Thee for the blessing of the last ten years,
and for all the sweet memories of their little lives —
memories how fragrant with every blissful, happy
thought. I thank Thee for the full assurance that
each has gone to the arms of the Good Shepherd,
whom each loved according to the capacity of her
years. I thank Thee for the bright hopes of a
happy reunion, when we shall meet to part no more.

Catherine and Craufurd Tait, p. 302.

Parents and Children 127

O Lord, for Jesus Christ's sake comfort our desolate
hearts. May we be a united family still in heart
through the communion of saints — through Jesus
Christ our Lord.' x

ALFRED TENNYSON

Enoch Arden, in Tennyson's poem, speaks thus
of his departed infant :—

4 And now there is but one of all my blood,
Who will embrace me in the world-to-be !
This is his hair ; she cut it off and gave it,
And I have borne it with me all these years,
And thought to bear it with me to my grave :
But now my mind is changed, for I shall see him,
My babe, in bliss ; wherefore when I am gone,
Take, give her this, for it may comfort her ;
It will moreover be a token to her
That I am he.'

ALFRED LYTTELTON

After the death of his infant son in 1888, Alfred
Lyttelton wrote : * I have been really comforted
by the thought of his being with my darling.
She once wrote to Edward, that if she died she
didn't think her baby could live without her, and
in the few moments when I can faithfully realise

1 Life of Archbishop Tait, vol. i. p. 190.

128 Reunion in Eternity

him with her, the thought that he takes with him
to her, on his fresh lips and cheeks, my poor kisses,
is inexpressibly sweet. Such an unspotted little
messenger from me, who feel so coarse and low by
their side.'

The birth of this child had cost the life of his
young mother.

JEAN INGELOW

' I do not pray, " Comfort me ! comfort me ! "

For how should comfort be ?

O, — O that cooing mouth — that little white head !
No ; but I pray, " If it be not too late,

Open to me the gate,
That I may find my babe when I am dead."

Show me the path. I had forgotten Thee

When I was happy and free,

Walking down here in the gladsome light o' the sun ;
But now I come and mourn : O set my feet

In the road to thy blest seat,
And for the rest, O God, Thy will be done.'

MRS. BROWNING
Only a Curl

' He 's ours and for ever. Believe,
O father ! — O mother, look back
To the first love's assurance ! To give
Means with God not to tempt or deceive
With a cup thrust in Benjamin's sack.

Parents and Children 129

He gives what He gives. Be content I
He resumes nothing given — be sure !

God lend ? — where the usurers lent

In His temple, indignant He went
And scourged away all those impure.

He lends not, but gives to the end,
As He loves to the end. If it seem

That He draws back a gift, comprehend

Tis to add to it rather — amend,
And finish it up to your dream,—

Or keep, — as a mother will toys

Too costly, though given by herself,
Till the room should be stiller from noise,
Arid the children more fit for such joys
Kept over their heads on the shelf.

So look up, friends ! you who, indeed,

Have possessed in your house a sweet piece
Of the Heaven which men strove for, must need
Be more earnest than others are, — speed
Where they loiter, persist where they cease.

You know how one angel smiles there :

Then weep not. 'Tis easy for you
To be drawn by a single gold hair
Of that curl, from earth's storm and despair,

To the safe place above us. Adieu.'

We turn next to passages referring to children
who have passed the age of infancy.

130 Reunion in Eternity

SHAKESPEARE

Constance, in King John, rejects the consola
tion of Philip n. and the Legate Pandulph on
the imprisonment of her boy, Arthur. She uses
these pathetic words : —

* And, father cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven :
If that be true, I shall see my boy again ;
For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire,
There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud
And chase the native beauty from his cheek
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit,
And so he '11 die ; and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him : therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.'

SAMUEL RUTHERFORD

Samuel Rutherford wrote, in 1640, to a friend
who had lost a son : —

' A going-down star is not annihilated, but shall
appear again. If he hath cast his bloom and
flower, the bloom is fallen in heaven in Christ's
lap ; and as he was lent a while to Time, so is he

Parents and Children 131

given now to Eternity, which will take yourself ;
and the difference of your shipping and his to
heaven and Christ's shore, the land of life, is only
in some few years, which weareth every day shorter,
and some short and soon-reckoned summers will
give you a meeting with him. But what with
him ? Nay, with better company : — with the
Chief and Leader of the heavenly troops, that are
riding on white horses, that are triumphing in
glory.'

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Wordsworth wrote to Southey after the death
of Southey's son, Herbert, in 1816 : ' Whether I
look back or forward I sorrow for you, but I doubt
not that in time your retrospective thoughts will be
converted into sweet though sad pleasures ; and,
as to your prospective regards in connection with
this dear child, as they will never stop short of
another and a more stable world, before them
your disappointments will melt away, but they will
make themselves felt, as they ought to do, since it
will be for a salutary purpose. . . . Farewell, and
the God of love and mercy sustain you, and your
partner.'

When Wordsworth was dying, his wife said

132 Reunion in Eternity

gently to him, ' William, you are going to Dora.' l
He made no reply at the time, and the word:*
seemed to have passed unheeded ; indeed, it wa:>
not certain that they had even been heard. More
than twenty-four hours afterwards one of his nieces
came into the room, and was drawing aside the
curtains of his chamber, and then, as if awakening
from a quiet sleep, he said, 4 Is that Dora ? '

ARCHBISHOP BENSON

Archbishop Benson wrote to his wife, a year after
the death of his eldest son, Martin, at the age of
seventeen : 4 How strange and how beautiful it
will be to see him again : if we are worthy, to hear
from himself that he would rather have passed awa>
from us when he did than have stayed with us
That is hard to realise — and St. Paul even did not
know which to choose. May God only keep true
in heart and firm in faith our other loves.' 2

1 His daughter, Mrs. Quillinan, who had recently passed away

2 Life of Archbishop Benson, vol. i. p. 447. Mr. A. C. Bensor
tells us that some time after his son's death ' the Bishop showec
Canon Mason a card on which Martin had been copying out ir
mediaeval characters the hymn " O quanta qualia/' and had laic
down his pen at " quos decautabimus " : —

' " One and unending is that triumph-song,
Which to the angels and us shall belong. " '

Parents and Children 133

Bishop G. H. Wilkinson wrote in 1879 to Dr.
Benson, after the death of Martin : ' How happy
it will be in that strange and invisible Kingdom
with your boy, and with my own wife, and the great
company, to see what each blow of the hammer has
really meant, only may we not be found aSo/cipoi
(castaways).'

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

Mrs. Beecher Stowe wrote, after the death of
her son Henry : —

' I think I have felt the healing touch of Jesus of
Nazareth on the deep wound in my heart, for I
have golden hours of calm when I say, "Even so,
Father, for so it seemeth good in Thy sight." So
sure am I that the most generous love has ordered
all, that I can now take pleasure to give this little
proof of my unquestioning confidence in resigning
one of my dearest comforts to Him. I feel very
near the spirit-land, and the words, " I shall go to
him, but he shall not return to me," are very sweet.'

To her daughter Georgiana, Mrs. Stowe wrote :—

' Henry's fair, sweet face looks down upon me

now and then from out a cloud, and I feel again

all the bitterness of the eternal " No," which says

134 Reunion in Eternity

I must never, never in this life, see that face, lean
on that arm, hear that voice. Not that my faith
in God in the least fails, and that I do not believe;
that all this is for good. I do, and, though not
happy, I am blessed. Weak, weary as I am, I rest
on Jesus in the innermost depth of my soul, and an
quite sure that there is coming an inconceivable
hour of beauty and glory when I shall regain Jesus,
and He will give me back my beloved one, whom
He is educating in a far higher sphere than I
proposed.'

MRS. BROWNING

In Mrs. Browning's poem, ' Isobel's Child,' the
dying child says to the mother :— -

4 Love ! earth's love ! and can we love
Fixedly where all things move ?
Can the sinning love each other ?

Mother, mother,
I tremble in thy close embrace,
I feel thy tears adown my face,
Thy prayers do keep me out of bliss —
O dreary earthly love !

Loose thy prayer and let me go
To the place where loving is.
Yet not sad ; and when is given
Escape to thee from this below,

Parents and Children 135

Thou shalt behold me that I wait
For thee beside the happy gate,
And silence shall be up in heaven
To hear our greeting kiss.'

In ' The Mourning Mother ' Mrs. Browning
tenderly consoles a mother whose blind boy has

died :-

4 See how he went out straightway

From the dark world he knew, —
No twilight in the gateway

To mediate 'twixt the two, —
Into the sudden glory,

Out of the dark he trod,
Departing from before thee

At once to light and God ! —
For the first face, beholding

The Christ's in its divine ;
For the first place, the golden

And tideless hyaline,
With trees at lasting summer

That rock to songful sound,
While angels the new-comer

Wrap a still smile around.
Oh, in the blessed psalm now,

His happy voice he tries,
Spreading a thicker palm-bough

Than others, o'er his eyes !
Yet still, in all the singing,

Thinks haply of thy song
Which, in his life's first springing,

Sang to him all night long ;

136 Reunion in Eternity

And wishes it beside him,

With kissing lips that cool
And soft did overglide him,

To make the sweetness full.
Look up, O mourning mother !

Thy blind boy walks in light :
Ye wait for one another

Before God's infinite.
But thou art now the darkest,

Thou mother left below—
Thou the sole blind, — thou markest,

Content that it be so, —
Until ye two have meeting

Where Heaven's pearl-gate is,
And he shall lead thy feet in,

As once thou leddest his.
Wait on, thou mourning mother ! '

In 4 A Child's Grave at Florence,' Mrs. Browning
sings :—

' Love, strong as Death, shall conquer Death,

Through struggle made more glorious :
This mother stills her sobbing breath,
Renouncing yet victorious.

Arms, empty of her child, she lifts

With spirit unbereaven—
" God will not all take back His gifts ;

My Lily's mine in heaven.

Parents and Children 137

" Still mine ! maternal rights serene

Not given to another !
The crystal bars shine faint between

The souls of child and mother.

" Meanwhile," the mother cries, " content !

Our love was well divided :
Its sweetness following where she went,

Its anguish stayed where I did.

" Well done of God, to halve the lot,

And give her all the sweetness ;
To us the empty room and cot —

To her, the Heaven's completeness.

" To us, this grave — to her, the rows

The mystic palm-trees spring in ;
To us the silence in the house —

To her, the choral singing.

" For her, to gladden in God's view—

For us to hope and bear on !
Grow, Lily, in thy garden new

Beside the rose of Sharon.

" Grow fast in heaven, sweet Lily clipped,

In love more calm than this is —
And may the angels dewy-lipped

Remind thee of our kisses !

" While none shall tell thee of our tears.

These human tears now falling,
Till, after a few patient years,

One home shall take us all in.

138 Reunion in Eternity

44 Child, father, mother— who, left out !

Not mother and not father ! —
And when, our dying couch about,

The natural mists shall gather,

" Some smiling angel close shall stand

In old Correggio's fashion,
And bear a Lily in his hand,

For death's annunciation."

MRS. OLIPHANT

Mrs. Oliphant wrote after the death of her last
boy, her idolised c Cecco ' : ' I know my Cecco in his
heart loved good company and was fain to make
friends, but was kept back by the reserve of his
nature and a shyness to believe in the interest of
others in himself. And the other morning it came
into my head that he would now have the noblest
of company, and would doubt no more the affection
of others, but know as he was known. And this
for a little gave me great and sweet consolation, to
think of him among some band of the young men
like himself whom I have a fond, fantastic thought
that our Lord draws to Him, because He too in His
flesh was a young man, and still loves His peers in
human age, and gathers them about Him, for some
great reason of His own. You will feel how fan-

Parents and Children 139

tastic all this is, and yet it gives me more gleams and
moments of consolation than anything else.' *

Principal Story wrote of his last visit to Mrs.
Oliphant : ' Hearing she was very ill, I went down
on Sunday week to Wimbledon and found her on
her deathbed. Her voice was still strong with its
old, familiar tone : her wonderful eyes were as
lambent as ever ; and her mind was as calm and
clear as a summer's sea. " I am dying," she said,
" I do not think I can last through the night."
Thinking of the " Little Pilgrim " and the " Seen
and the Unseen," and the many touching efforts
her imagination had made to lift the impenetrable
veil, I said, " The world to which you are going is
a familiar world to you." " I have no thoughts,"
she replied, " not even of my boys ; but only of
my Saviour waiting to receive me, and of the
Father." The names of her sons were among the
last on her lips.

G. W. CABLE

The old Colonel in Belles Demoiselles Plantations,
who had lost his daughters by drowning in the
river, dies at the end of the story : —

1 Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. Oliphant, pp. 412, 413.

140 Reunion in Eternity

' The Colonel whispered once more : " Mes belles
demoiselles ! — in paradise — in the garden — I shall
be with them at sunrise " : and so it was.'

GEORGE MACDONALD

Some of the loveliest passages in verse on the
reunion of parents and children are from the pen
of George Macdonald.

In the Diary of an Old Soul there are these lines
on father and daughter :—

4 Again I shall behold thce, daughter true ;
The hour will come when I shall hold thee fast :
In God's name, loving thee all through and through.
Somewhere in His grand thought this waits for us.
Then shall I see a smile not like thy last —
For that great thing which came when all was past,
Was not a smile, but God's peace glorious.

Twilight of the transfiguration — joy

Gleam-faced, pure-eyed, strong-willed, light-hearted

boy !

Hardly thy life clear forth of heaven was sent
Ere it broke out into a smile, and went.
So swift thy growth, so true thy goalward bent.
Thou, child and sage inextricably blent,
Must surely one day come to teach thy father in some

heavenly tent.'

Parents and Children 141

Elsewhere the poet writes :—

' Death, like high faith, levelling, lifteth all ;
When I awake, my daughter and my son
Grown sister and brother, in my arms shall fall,
Tenfold my boy and girl. Sure every one
Of all the brood to the old wings will run.' l

We quote also the poem ' Greitna, Father '

' Greitna, father, that I 'm gauin,
For fu' well ye ken the gaet ;
I' the winter, corn ye 're sawin',
I' the hairst again ye hae't.

I 'm gauin' hame to see my mither ;

She '11 be well acquant or this !
Sair we '11 muse at ane anither

'Twixt the auld word an' new kiss !

Love I 'm doobtin' may be scanty

Roun' ye efter I 'm awa' :
Yon kirkyard has happin plenty

Close aside me, green an' braw !

An' abune there 's room for mony ;

'Twasna made for ane or twa,
But was aye for a' an' ony

Countin' love the best ava.

George Macdonald, Diary of an Old Soul.

142 Reunion in Eternity

There nane less ye '11 be my father ;

Auld names we '11 nor tyne nor spare !
A' my sonship I maun gather,

For the Son is King up there.

Greitna, father, that I 'm gauin',
For ye ken fu' well the gaet !

Here, in winter, cast yer sawin',
There, in hairst, again ye hae't.'

Ill

CHILDREN AND PARENTS

LIFE'S first great sorrow comes to many of us in
the last illness and death of a beloved parent.
The words of Maurice to A. J. Scott are especially
true of such an experience :—

4 The wonderful blessings of earthly affection can
never draw us so closely, become so transfigured into
what is higher, never carry with them such a pledge
of being eternal, as in sickness. Even where many
shadows seem to rest upon the spirit of the sufferer,
where what is to you all real appears to him in
distinct and visionary, and what you think visionary
he still clings to as real, this effect I have found
following sickness.' x

LAMENNAIS'S ' HYMN OF THE DEAD '

We may place here that celebrated prose-poem
Lamennais's Hymn of the Dead, which was inspired

1 Life of F, D. Maurice, vol. i. p. 378.

143

144 Reunion in Eternity

by the death of his father and of the uncle who had
cared for his youth.

' I have just lost my poor uncle,' he wrote, ' who
has been to us a second father. The two brothers
on the same day married two sisters ; they are
together now. So all things pass away, so all things
die ! Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur ! '

' And thus it happened,' says a biographer of
Lamennais,1 ' that on November 1 of this year
1829, depressed in mind and worn out in body,
he had retired to his rpom, not perhaps without
having reminded his young disciples of the sorrowful
commemoration ordained by the Church to take
place on the following day. The scene has been
graphically described by his nephew Blaize :— -
" It was in 1829, on the evening of the Feast of
All Saints. We were all together in the drawing-
room of the old granite house teeming with so
many memories. M. Lorin, the maternal ancestor
of M. de Lamennais, painted in his judge's robes,
looked down at us gravely and kindly. Madame
Lorin, dressed in yellow damask sprinkled with
little flowers, and in a velvet cloak trimmed with

1 The Abbe de Lamennais, by the Hon. William Gibson,
pp. 114-147.

Children and Parents 145

fur, her hands in her muff, softly smiled at us.
But time had passed over these dear faces, and
had left but a shade of sadness. My grandfather
and my grandmother Lamennais, many of their
children and their grandchildren, my great-uncle,
Des Saudrais, and his devoted wife, had lived in
this house, and had found in it a little rest and
happiness. On such a day they, too, had thought
of their dead, and hoped for them the joys of
heaven. The autumn wind was carrying along in
clouds the yellowed leaves from the old oaks which
had seen so many generations pass away, and
causing to vibrate the rows of slender needled
twigs on the branches of the pines, which rose like
black phantoms in the darkness. How many
loved voices mingling with the rumours of the night
cried to us from the grave ' Remember ! ' M. de
Lamennais came into the room and read to us his
Hymn of the Dead :—

4 " They also have passed over the earth, they
have gone down the river of Time ; their voices
were heard for a moment on the banks, and then
they were heard no more. Where are they ?
Who can tell us ? Blessed are the dead who die
in the Lord.

K

146 Reunion in Eternity

'' While they passed, thousands of shadowy
phantoms beset them ; the world which Christ
had cursed showed them its wealth, its pleasures,
its power ; they saw it, and suddenly they saw only
eternity. Where are they ? Who can tell us ?
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.

' " As a ray from on high, appeared a cross far
off to guide them on their way, but all did not turn
to it. Where are they ? Who can tell us ? Blessed
are the dead who die in the Lord.

' " There were some who said : What are these
floods which hurry us along ? Is there anything
after this rapid journey ? We do not know. No
man knows. And as they spoke the banks dis
appeared. Where are they ? Who can tell us ?
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.

4 " There were some who seemed, wrapped in
thought, to listen to a sweet word, and then looking
towards the west all at once they began to sing of
an invisible dawn, and of a day which never ends.
Where are they ? Who can tell us ? Blessed
are the dead who die in the Lord.

' " Drawn along pell-mell, young and old, all
disappeared even as a vessel driven before a storm.
It would be easier to count the sand of the sea than

Children and Parents 147

the number of those who were hurrying by. Where
are they ? Who can tell us ? Blessed are the
dead who die in the Lord.

' " Those who saw them have said that a great
sadness was in their hearts ; agony stirred their
breasts, and as if tired of the work of life, raising
then- eyes to heaven, they wept. Where are they ?
Who can tell us ? Blessed are the dead who die in
the Lord.

4 " From the unknown places where the river is
lost, two voices are continually rising. One says :
' Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord ;
Lord, hear my voice ; let Thine ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications. If thou, Lord,
shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall
stand ? But there is forgiveness with Thee and
plenteous redemption.'

4 " And the other : ' We praise Thee, O God I
We bless Thee. Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God
of Hosts. Heaven and earth are full of Thy
glory.'

' " And we also shall go thither whence come
these cries of sorrow or songs of triumph. Where
shall we be ? Who can tell us ? Blessed are the
dead who die in the Lord."

148 Reunion in Eternity

FREDERIC OZANAM

The French saint and scholar, Frederic Ozanam,
who was called from his labours in mid -life after a
long illness, had a profound belief in the reunion
of families hi the heavenly state. His father, a
4 beloved physician,' died in 1836, as the result of
a fall on the staircase of a house where he was
visiting one of his many poor patients. Frederic
Ozanam, writing to his early friend Curnier, said
that he drew comfort in his bereavement from the
thought of his father's piety, and from this other
thought ' that soon, if we are good, we shall join
him again in the eternal meeting-place, where death
will be no more. As the number increases in the
unseen world of the dear souls who have left us,
the more powerful becomes the attraction which
draws us thither. We cling less firmly to earth
when the roots by which we are bound to it have
been broken by Time.' l

Two years after the death of his mother, Ozanam
wrote to his friend, Falconnet, a beautiful letter of
consolation on a similar bereavement. He told

1 Frederic Ozanam d'apres sa Correspondance, par Mgr.
Baunard (1912), p. 192.

Children and Parents 149

how he felt the presence of his mother still about
him, and that he believed she was still caring for
him in heaven. ' Have mothers here on earth any
other glory than their children, any other happi
ness than ours ? And what is heaven for them, if
we are absent ? I am very sure, therefore, that we
fill their thoughts, that they live for us, there as
here. I believe they have not changed, except
for greater power and a larger love.' 1

JOHN FOSTER

When John Foster learned in 1799 that his aged
parents had removed to a new home, he wrote to
them as follows : —

4 To the immortal spirit every house, and the
world itself, is but a prison ; you carry into your
new abode the pleasing certainty that no sublunary
abode will detain you so long as the one which you
have quitted. How much you will know before
many more years shall have passed ! Long before
that time you will have seen the visions of eternity;
you will have entered the alone happy mansions ;
you will have joined the great company which no

1 Frederic Ozanam d'apres sa Correspondance, par Mgr.
Bauiiard (1912), p. 228.

150 Reunion in Eternity

man can number. Yes, and at an earlier period or
a later, I hope I shall meet you there, after having
overcome through the blood of the Lamb. Go
before, if it must be so, and enter first into the
Paradise of God. I trust that the path of faith
and zeal will conduct me to the same happy place,
and that He who has the keys of the invisible
world will give me admittance there.'

THOMAS CARLYLE

Carlyle wrote of his father :—

4 Let me learn of him. Let me write my books as
he built his houses, and walk as blamelessly through
this shadow world ; if God so will, to rejoin him at
last.'

And again :—

4 Perhaps my father, all that essentially was my
father, is even now near me, with me. Both he
and I are with God. Perhaps, if it so please God,
we shall in some higher state of being meet one
another, recognise one another.'

Carlyle wrote to his brother Alick in 1847 : —
4 Early next week, probably on Monday ... I
expect to be in poor old Annandale again, and to see

Children and Parents 151

our dear old Mother once more. It is a sight for
which one ought to thank Heaven, surely with one's
whole soul : and yet to me it is always full of sorrow :
and when the time comes to part again, it quite
tears me to pieces for the moment, so that I could
almost repent ever having come. O surely there is
some kind of reunion appointed for poor wretches
who have honestly loved one another here, and yet
could never much help one another, but had to
admit many times that their hearts were sore, and
could only share their sorrows together ! God made
us all ; God will provide what is good for us all,
what is best for us all.' l

' To all of us,' wrote Carlyle to Ruskin, ' the loss
of our mother is a new epoch in our life-pilgrimage,
now fallen lonelier and sterner than it ever seemed
before.'

He wrote to his mother in her old age : —
' Often, my dear mother, does it come across me,
like the cold shadow of death, that we two must
part in the course of time. I shudder at the
thought, and find no refuge, except in humbly
trusting that the great God will surely appoint us

1 New Letters, vol. ii. pp. 47, 48.

152 Reunion in Eternity

a meeting in that far country to which we are
tending. May He bless you for ever, my dear
mother, and keep up in your heart the sublime hopes
which at present serve as a pillar of cloud by day
and a pillar of fire by night, to guide our footsteps
through the wilderness of life. We are in His
hands. He will not utterly forsake us. Let us
trust in Him.'

After his mother's death in 1854, he wrote : —
' I often think it is with me as with Ulysses (in
old Homer) : At the utmost and worst passage of
his wanderings he converses with the shade of his
mother.' *

JOHN RUSKIN

In March 1881 Ruskin wrote to Dr. John Brown :
1 Both these illnesses have been part of one and
the same constant thought, far out of sight of the
people about me, and of course getting more and
more separated from me as they go on in the ways
of the modern world, and / go back to live with
my father and my mother and my nurse, and one
more — all waiting for me in the Land of the Leal.' 2

1 New Letters, vol. ii. p. 164.

2 Life of Ruskin, vol. ii. p. 454.

Children and Parents 153

MRS. BROWNING ON HER MOTHER-IN-LAW

Robert Browning's mother died in March 1849,
soon after the birth of his son in Italy. Mrs.
Browning wrote to her sister-in-law in May : —

' I understand what I have lost. I know the
worth of a tenderness such as you speak of, and I
feel that for the sake of my love for Robert she was
ready out of the fulness of her heart to love me also.
It has been bitter to me that I have unconsciously
deprived him of the personal face-to-face shining
out of her angelic nature for more than two years,
but she has forgiven me, and we shall meet when
it pleases God, before His throne.'

PHILLIPS BROOKS

Bishop Phillips Brooks, who belonged to a far-
descended New England family, wrote to his
widowed mother at the death of his father :—

4 When we remember his weakness and restless
ness a week ago, and then think of the perfect peace
and joy and knowledge that he is enjoying now,
it is not so hard to bear it all and even to be thank
ful. It was a noble, faithful, useful life here, and
now he is with Christ. It will not be long before

154 Reunion in Eternity

we are with him. Let us try to be brave and wait
as he would want us to do.' l

BISHOP WILKINSON

<t

Bishop G. H. Wilkinson wrote after the sudden
death of his father : —

' Often I cannot believe it. I fancy that he is
coming over, and catch myself saying to myself
that I will ask his advice about this or that altera
tion, and then I remember that all our talks — so
free, so happy, so like the talks of real friends as
well as of father and son — all are over for this world.
Hereafter it may be there will be happier talks,
things made clear which now are dark, difficulties
which beset our path here for ever removed. Then
I am convinced we shall see that our Heavenly
Father has done all in perfect love, as well as
perfect wisdom. What we do not know now we
shall know hereafter — of this I feel more and more
certain every day.' 2

CARDINAL NEWMAN

J. H. Newman wrote after the death of his
mother in 1836 • —

1 Life oj Phillips Brooks, vol. ii. p. 166.

2 Life of Bishop Wilkinson, vol. i. p. 158.

Children and Parents 155

' I am learning more than hitherto to live in the
presence of the dead — this is a gain which strange
faces cannot take away.' l

DR. JOHN BROWN

Dr. John Brown, author of Rab and His Friends,
says in one of his letters : —

' My love for my mother has been stirring un
satisfied in me for twenty -eight years, and will, I
am sure, never cease demanding its own till I meet
her again. I can remember standing at her grave,
and wondering what sort of odd trick this was that
so many grave men were playing, until they began
pulling from me the little cord I had in my hand
holding the coffin, and then I felt something of
the reality of my terrible loss, never to see her
again and her mild unchangeable eyes, and never
to be near her and sleep in her bosom.'

DR. STOPFORD BROOKE

Dr. Stopford Brooke wrote in his diary, on hearing
of the departure of his venerable mother, Mrs.
Richard Brooke : —

1 Letters and Correspondence of J. H. Newman, edited by Anne
Mozley, vol. i. p. 176.

156 Reunion in Eternity

4 1 can see her now, and a fair vision she is. I
wonder if she is now talking with my Father, and
does he know — and did he meet her immediately ?
Oh, what a tribe of questions surge up like ghosts
on a resurrection day 1 Not a word, not a word, not
a breath, not one intimation from that world, near
as the very heart, but far as the remotest space to
thought.'

To his sister, Honor, he wrote :

4 I wonder if my Father welcomed her, or did it
seem otherwise to the great Lover ? He must have
been watching, and they will have another honey
moon. I think what will astonish us most when
we get into the life to come will be the host of friends
whom we shall meet, many whom we have never
known on earth, a thousand, thousand welcomes.
There is nothing greater than the Heimlichkeit of
Heaven. We shall be intimately at home.' l

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote of her saintly
mother, Roxana Foote, wife of Dr. Beecher :—
' There was one passage of Scripture always

1 Life and Letters of Stopford Brooke, by L. P. Jacks, vol. ii.
pp. 486, 487.

Children and Parents 157

associated with her in our minds in childhood ; it
was this : "Ye are come unto Mount Zion, the
city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem,
and to an innumerable company of angels ; to the
general assembly and church of the firstborn, and
to the spirits of just men made perfect."

' We all knew that this was what our father
repeated to her when she was dying, and we often
repeated it to each other. It was to that we felt
we must attain, though we scarcely knew how. I
think it will be the testimony of all her sons that
her image stood between them and the temptations
of youth as a sacred shield ; that the hope of
meeting her in heaven has sometimes been the last
strand which did not part in hours of fierce tempta
tion.' J

JULIANA HORATIA EWING

Mrs. Ewing wrote after the death of her mother,
Mrs. Gatty :—

' It is all over. She is with your father and
mother, and the dear Bishop, and my two brothers,
and many an old friend who has " gone before."

1 Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe, by Annie Fields,
pp. 13, 14.

158 Reunion in Eternity

The sense of her higher state is so overwhelming,
one cannot indulge a common sorrow. For myself
I can only say that I feel as if I were a child again
in respect of her. She is as much with me now as
with any of her children, even if I am in Jamaica
or Ceylon. Now she knows and sees my life, and
I have a feeling as if she were an ever-present
conscience to me (as a mother's presence makes a
child alive to what is right and what is wrong),
which I hope by God's grace may never leave me
and may make me more worthy of having had
such a mother.' l

FATHER BENSON

Father Benson of Cowley wrote to a lady on the
death of her mother : —

4 Your mother's death must necessarily sever
many links. The earthly tie is gone, but in the
scattering of a family one realises increasingly the
heavenly bond of unity which death cannot break.
The next world was the ghost-world. As time
goes on the ghost -world becomes the reality and
the material world a phantasmagoria.' 2

1 Juliana Horatia Ewing and her Books, by Horatia K. F.
Eden, p. 192.

2 Letters of Richard Meux Benson, p. 301.

Children and Parents 159

THE HON. ADELAIDE DRUMMOND
Mrs. Drummond wrote in her sixty-ninth year
to her aged stepmother, Lady Russell : —

' Sometimes a quite unexpected thought cheers
one in regard to death. I find great sweetness
in the calm way some of the Old Testament saints,
Jacob, for instance, prepared for and met the
change. That expression '4 Thou shalt be gathered
to thy fathers" soothes me very much. The idea
of being " gathered " suggests care and thought in
the gatherer, care that we shall not be lost, but
carefully conveyed and treasured up. And " to
thy fathers " seems to suggest that we shall be
with, not necessarily our ancestors, but those with
whom we have been en rapport, those who care for
us as we have cared for them. I had a very happy
sleepless hour when that thought came to me.' l

D. M. DOLBEN

From his poem ' The Shrine.'

' There is a shrine whose golden gate
Was. opened by the Hand of God ;
It stands serene, inviolate,

Though millions have its pavement trod ;

1 The Hon. Adelaide Drummond: Retrospect and Memoir, by
Basil Champneys, p. 14.

160 Reunion in Eternity

As fresh as when the first sunrise
Awoke the lark in Paradise.

Tis compassed with the dust and toil
Of common days, yet should there fall

A single speck, a single soil
Upon the whiteness of its wall,

The angels' tears in tender rain

Would make the temple theirs again.

Without, the world is tired and old,
But, once within the enchanted door,

The mists of time are backward rolled,
And creeds and ages are no more ;

But all the human-hearted meet

In one communion vast and sweet.

I enter — all is simply fair,

Nor incense-clouds, nor carven throne ;
But in the fragrant morning air

A gentle lady sits alone ;
My mother — ah ! whom should I see
Within, save ever only thee ? '

WILLIAM COWPER
From the ' Lines to his Mother's Picture.'

* Where thou art gone
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown.
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore,
The parting word shall pass my lips no more ! '

IV
BROTHERS AND SISTERS

( If we do not know ourselves we most certainly do not know
our brethren : that revelation awaits us, it may be, first in
Heaven.' — MICHAEL FAIRLESS.

CARLYLE

CARLYLE wrote to Emerson after the death of
Charles Chauncy Emerson, in 1836 :—

' What a bereavement, my friend, is this that has
overtaken you ! Such a brother, with such a life
opening around him, like a blooming garden where
he was to labour and gather, all vanished suddenly
like frostwork, and hidden from your eye ! It is a
loss, a sore loss, which God had appointed you. . . .
Many times in the crowded din of the Living, some
sight, some feature of a face, will recall to you the
Loved Face ; and in these turmoiling streets you
see the little silent churchyard, the green grave that
lies there so silent — inexpressibly wae. O, perhaps
we shall all meet yonder, and the tears be wiped

L

1 62 Reunion in Eternity

from all eyes 1 One thing is no perhaps : surely
we shall all meet if it be the will of the Maker of us.
If it is not His will, then is it not better so ? Silence
since in these days we have no speech ! Eye hath
not seen, nor ear heard, hi any day.' x

R. W. DALE

Dr. R. W. Dale clung with close affection to his
younger brother, Thomas, a gifted and accomplished
man. Thomas Dale had been third Wrangler in
the Mathematical Tripos in 1862, was elected to
a Trinity Fellowship, and settled at Cambridge,
where he won a considerable reputation as a
college lecturer and 4 coach.' His death, in 1883,
was a lasting sorrow to Dr. Dale. The bereaved
brother wrote to Dr. Crosskey : ' One side of
life has become quite dark to me. My other
brothers died in childhood before he was born.
I never had a sister. God has given me much
love of other kinds — but the heart aches for
what is lost and can never come back. We shall
be restored to each other, but under other con
ditions ; the old affection will be transfigured, but

Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, vol. i. pp. 101, 102.

Brothers and Sisters 163

it will not be the same. We cling to the life that
now is as well as to the life that is to come.'

Dr. Dale's son and biographer says that the
stanzas in Keble's poem for St. Andrew's Day, 'When
brothers part for manhood's race,' were among
Dale's favourite passages. The last stanza — quoted
in an address on Friendship, only a few weeks before
his death — had come to have a personal note for
him :—

' " That so, before the judgment-seat,

Though changed and glorified each face,
Not unremembered ye may meet,
For endless ages to embrace." ' 1

NORMAN MACLEOD

In December, 1833, Norman Macleod lost his
brother James, his junior by three years and a lad
of high promise. The event is described as a turn
ing point in Norman's life, and the anniversary of
his brother's death was always kept sacred by him.
In his Journal he wrote of their last meeting :—

4 Monday, IQth Dec. — Alas, this day I parted
from one whom I loved as devotedly as a brother
can be loved ! Thank God and Christ we shall

1 Life of Dr. Dale, p. 515.

164 Reunion in Eternity

meet ! I went to his bedside : "I am going away,
James, my boy ; but I part without sorrow, for I
know you are Christ's and Christ is God's." " I
have, Norman, got clearer views since we met.
I know on whom I can lean." ' l

CARDINAL NEWMAN

Cardinal Newman's biographer tells us that the
death of his sister Mary, in January 1828, made an
epoch in his life, and greatly developed his religious
nature. To this sister he had been devoted : —

' She had been in delicate health. But her death
was at the last sudden. His letters show how hei
memory haunts him. He bids the family set down
in writing all they can remember about her. " It
draws tears to my eyes," he writes, " to think that
all of a sudden we can only converse about her as
about some inanimate object, word or stone. But
she shall " flourish from the tomb." And in the
meantime, it being but a little time, I would try
to talk to her in imagination and in hope of the
future by setting down all I can think of about
her." ' 2

1 Life of Norman Macleod, 2nd edition, 1877, p. 32.

2 Life of Cardinal Newman, by Wilfrid V^ard, vol. i. p. 41.

Brothers and Sisters 165

DR. JOHN KER

Dr. John Ker wrote to one who had lost a
brother : —

4 1 think, next to the desire for God Himself—
for an Infinite Friend, it is the desire for our dead
that presses us to the cry, " My soul thirsteth for
God, for the living God," the living God who will
not let the dearest and deepest things to which He
has given life die for ever, and who has sent His
Son into the world to lie down in our grave and rise
again, that He may be the first fruits of them that
sleep. If we can clasp Him to our heart, it recovers
all and more — the shadow of death is turned into
the morning, and the dim, fading past changes into
a blessed future. We may even say it makes them
present. " Ye shall see greater things than these,"
heaven opens, and the angels of God ascend and
descend on Him. May you and yours, my dear
friend, have something of this view, and as your
faith lifts its eye by that heavenly ladder, may the
departed come down and be about you in your
thoughts and feelings, may we not hope with a true
though unseen presence ? . . .' I

1 Letters, p. 336.

1 66 Reunion in Eternity

STOPFORD BROOKE

Stopford Brooke wrote after the death of his
brother, William : —

4 1 suppose I am, in getting old, less liable to
think of loss and more of gain when I consider the
dead I have loved. I do not love them less, but
even more, but I am no longer troubled about their
life. They are with the highest Love ; and William
was so good, true and loving, that he will be crowdec
with enjoyment. And I know he was looking
forward to meeting my father and mother. It is
a vast blessing in these hours to be at rest about
those who are gone from us and alive in God.' l

JAMES SHIRLEY'S ITALIAN TRAGEDY ' THE
TRAITOR '

ACT V. SCENE 3.

Florio laments on the dead body of his sister,
in her bed :—

4 Let me look upon

My sister now ; still she retains her beauty,
Death has been kind to leave her all this sweetness.

1 Life and Letters of Stopford Brooke, by L. P. Jacks, vol. ii.
p. 488.

Brothers and Sisters 167

Thus in a morning have I oft saluted

My sister in her chamber, sate upon

Her bed, and talked of many harmless passages ;

But now 'tis night, and a long night with her,

I ne'er shall see these curtains 1 drawn again,

Until wre meet in heaven.'

1 i.e., her eyelids.

V
LOVERS

( Will lanthe wake again,
And give that faithful bosom joy
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch
Light, life and rapture from her smile ? '

SHELLEY.

' Could ye ' ' We loved her once "
Say cold of me when further put away

In earth's sepulchral clay,
When mute the lips which deprecate to-day?
Not so ! not then — least then ! When life is shriven

And' death's full joy is given —
Of those who sit and love you up in heaven
Say not " We loved them once."

Say never ye loved once :
God is too near above, the grave beneath,

And all our moments breathe
Too quick in mysteries of life and death
For such a word. The eternities avenge

Affections light of range.
There comes no change to justify that change,

Whatever comes — Loved Once ! '

E. B. BROWNING.

JOHN RUSKIN

RUSKIN wrote to a friend a year after the death
of his lady, Rose La Touche :—

168

Lovers 169

' There is one thing I am sure both Rose and
Beatrice would say — and Dante, now he is with
them — that in this day of the dark world, no one
who loves truly should think of being happy here :
that we are called upon to labour and to wait —
being sure of joy, such as we know not and
need not know, till it is revealed to us by the
Spirit.'

In the same letter Ruskin mentions that he has
been reading with extreme care the two sonnets of
Guido Guinicelli, one of which his biographer quotes
as follows : —

' " Comfort thee, comfort thee," exclaimeth Love ;
And Pity by thy God adjures thee " rest " ;
Oh then incline ye to such gentle prayer ;
Not Reason's plea should ineffectual prove,
Who bids ye lay aside this dismal vest,
For man meets death through sadness and despair.
Amongst you ye have seen a face so fair :
Be this in mortal mourning some relief.
And for more balm of grief,
Rescue thy spirit from its weary load,
Remembering thy God ;

And that in heaven thou hopest again to share
In sight of her, and with thine arms to fold :
Hope then : nor of this comfort quit thy hold.' l

1 Life of Ruskin, by E. T. Cook, vol. ii. p. 276.

i jo Reunion in Eternity

JACOPO DA LENTINO

The early Italian poet, Jacopo da Lentino, wrote
a sonnet on his Lady in Heaven, which is thus
translated by Rossetti :—

' I have it in my heart to serve God so
That into Paradise I shall repair —
The holy place through the which everywhere
I have heard say that joy and solace flow.
Without my lady I were loth to go, —
She who has the bright face and the bright hair ;
Because if she were absent, I being there,
My pleasure would be less than naught, I know.
Look you, I say not this to such intent
As that I there would deal in any sin :
I only would behold her gracious mien,
And beautiful soft eyes, and lovely face,
That so it should be my complete content
To see my lady joyful in her place.' l

E. B. BROWNING

4 How do I love thee ? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right ;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

1 Early Italian Poets, translated by D. G. Rossetti (Temple
Classics), p. 33.

Lovers 171

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life ! — and, if God choose,

1 shall but love thee better after death.'

' Sonnets from the Portuguese.'

MRS. BROWNING

(From a letter of 1849.)

4 To live rightly we must turn our faces forward
and not look backward morbidly for the footsteps
in the dust of those beloved ones who travelled
with us but yesterday. They themselves are not
behind but before, and we carry with us our
tenderness living and undiminished towards them,
to be completed when the round of this life is com
plete for us also.'

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

' O my love, my dove, lift up your eyes

Toward the eastern gate like an opening rose.
You and I who parted will meet in Paradise
Pass within and sing when the gates unclose.

This life is but the passage of a day,
This life is but a pang and all is over,

But in the life to come which fades not away
Every love shall abide and every lover.'

172 Reunion in Eternity

4 A dimness of a glory glimmers here
Thro' veils and distance from the space remote,
A faintest far vibration of a note
Reaches to us and seems to bring us near ;
Causing our face to glow with braver cheer,
Making the serried mist to stand afloat,
Subduing languor with an antidote,
And strengthening love almost to cast out fear :
Till for one moment golden city walls
Rise looming on us, golden walls of home,
Light of our eyes until the darkness falls ;
Then through the outer darkness burdensome
I hear again the tender voice that calls,
" Follow me hither, follow, rise and come."

4 If now you saw me you would say :
Where is the face I used to love ?
And I would answer : Gone before ;
It tarries veiled in Paradise.
When once the morning star shall rise,
When earth with shadow flees away
And we stand safe within the door,
Then you shall lift the veil thereof.
Look up, rise up ; for far above
Our palms are grown, our place is set ;
There we shall meet as once we met,
And love with old familiar love.'

CHARLOTTE BRONTE

Caroline Helstone says, as she watches Robert
Moore walking in the moonlight with Shirley :

Lovers 173

' They look to me like two great happy spirits :
yonder silvered pavement reminds me of that
white shore we believe to be beyond the death-
flood : they have reached it, they walk there
united.' *

D. G. ROSSETTI
These lines are from Rossetti's Blessed Damozel :

' " I wish that he were come to me,

For he will come," she said.
" Have I not prayed in Heaven ? — on earth,

Lord, Lord, has he not prayed,?
Are not two prayers a perfect strength ?
And shall I feel afraid ?

When round his head the aureole clings,

And he is clothed in white,
I '11 take his hand and go with him

To the deep wells of light ;
As unto a stream we will step down

And bathe there in God's sight.

We two will stand beside the shrine,

Occult, withheld, untrod,
Whose lamps are stirred continually

With prayer sent up to God ;
And see our old prayers, granted, melt

Each like a little cloud.

Shirley, chapter xiii.

174 Reunion in Eternity

We two will lie i' the shadow of

That living mystic tree
Within whose secret growth the Dove

Is sometimes felt to be,
While every leaf that His plumes touch

Saith His Name audibly.

And I myself will teach to him,

I myself, lying so,
The songs I sing here ; which his voice

Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
And find some knowledge at each pause,

Or some new thing to know.

There will I ask of Christ the Lord

Thus much for him and me : —
Only to live as once on earth

With Love — only to be,
As then awhile, for ever now

Together, I and he."

She gazed and listened and then said,

Less sad of speech than mild, —
44 All this is when he comes." She ceased,

The light thrilled towards her, filled
With angels in strong level flight.

Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.'

ROBERT BROWNING

Browning's poem fc The Last Ride Together '
closes with this verse :—

4 And yet — she has not spoke so long !
What if heaven be that, fair and strong

Lovers 175

At life's best, with our eyes upturned
Whither life's flower is first discerned,
We, fixed so, ever should so abide ?
What if we still ride on, we two
With life for ever old yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree,
The instant made eternity, —
And heaven just prove that I and she
Ride, ride together, for ever ride ? '

There is the desire for larger achievement
beyond the grave. In ' One Word More ' Browning
says :—

' I shall never, in the years remaining,
Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,
Make you music that should all-express me ;
So it seems : I stand on my attainment.
This of verse alone, one life allows me ;
Verse and nothing else have I to give you.
Other heights in other lives, God willing :
All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love ! '

THOMAS NOON TALFOURD
From ' ION.' Act v. Scene 2
Clemanthe asks Ion, on verge of his death :—
' And shall we never see each other ? '

Ion replies, after a pause :

' Yes !
I have ask'd that dreadful question of the hills

176 Reunion in Eternity

That look eternal ; of the flowing streams
That lucid flow for ever ; of the stars,
Amid whose fields of azure my raised spirit
Hath trod in glory : all were dumb, but now
While I thus gaze upon thy living face,
I feel the love that kindles through its beauty
Can never wholly perish ; we shall meet
Again, Clemanthe ! }

PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON
From his poem ' In Grief ' :—

c O strange and unseen land whereto we come,
Are thy shores shores of day, or shores of night ?
As we draw near shall we indeed see light,
And shall we hear, through lessening wind and foam,
The voice of her we love sound from the land,
And, looking shorewards, shall we see her stand
Girt round with glory on a peaceful strand
Smiling to see our dark skiff heave in sight ?

I cannot know ; there is no man who knows.

We are, and we are not, — and that is all

The knowledge which to any may befall ;

We know not life's beginning, nor life's close, —

'Twixt dawn and twilight shine the sunny hours

Wherein some hands pluck thorns and some hands

flowers ;

'Twixt light and shade are shed the sudden showers ;
Yet night shall cover earth as with a pall.

Lovers 177

Alas, poor song, all singing is in vain ;

What thing more sad is left for thee to say ?

Oh, weary time of life, and weary way,

Can dead souls rise, or lost joys live again ?

Now by the hand of sorrow are we led ;

Though sweet things come, they come as joys born

dead :

Let us arise, go hence, for all is said,
And we must bide the breaking of the day.'

VI
HUSBAND AND WIFE

' Till God's love set thee at his side again.'

TENNYSON TO QUEEN VICTORIA.

The following * Epitaph upon a Young Married Couple Dead
and Buryed together' is from the pen of the great Caroline
poet, Richard Crashaw : —

' To these, whom Death again did wed,
This grave 's their second Marriage-bed ;
For though the hand of fate could force
Twixt Soul and Body a divorce,
It could not sunder man and wife,
'Cause they both lived but one life.
Peace, good Reader. Doe not weep.
Peace, the Lovers are asleep.
They, sweet Turtles, folded ly
In the last knott love could ty.
And though they ly as they were dead
Their pillow stone their sheetes of lead,
(Pillow hard, and sheetes not warm)
Love made the bed ; They'll take no harm.
Let them sleep : let them sleep on .
Till this stormy night be gone,
Till the Eternall morrow dawn ;
Then the curtains will be drawn
And they will wake into a light
Whose day shall never dy in Night.

178

Husband and Wife 179

In Madame D'Arblay's Diary and Letters she describes the
death of her husband : —

' He bent forward, as he was supported nearly upright by
pillows in his bed, and taking my hand, and holding it between
both his own, he impressively said, " Je ne sais si ce sera le
dernier mot — mais ce sera la derniere pensee — notre re'union !"
Oh, words the most precious that ever the tenderest of husbands
left for balm to the lacerated heart of a surviving wife ! '

ST. AUGUSTINE

ST. AUGUSTINE thus describes the last illness of
his mother, Monica : —

4 She fell sick of a fever ; and in the sickness
one day she fell into a swoon, and was for a while
withdrawn from these visible things. We hastened
round her, but she was soon brought back to her
senses ; and, looking on me and my brother standing
by her, said to us inquiringly, " Where was I ? "
And then looking fixedly on us, with grief amazed ;
" Here," saith she, " shall you bury your mother."
I held my peace and refrained weeping ; but my
brother spake something, wishing for her, as the
happier lot, that she might die, not in a strange
place, but in her own land. Whereat, she with
anxious look, checking him with her eyes, for that
he still savoured such things, and then looking upon

180 Reunion in Eternity

me; "Behold," saith she, "what he saith ' :
and soon after to us both, " Lay," she saith, "this
body anywhere ; let not the care for that any
way disquiet you : this only I request, that you
would remember me at the Lord's altar, wherever
you be."

'But I, considering thy gifts, Thou unseen God,
which Thou instillest into the hearts of Thy faithful
ones, whence wondrous fruits do spring, did rejoice
and give thanks to Thee, recalling what I before j
knew, how careful and anxious she had ever been,
as to her place of burial, which she had providec
and prepared for herself by the body of her husband
For because they had lived in great harmony
together, she also wished (so little can the human
mind embrace things divine) to have this addition
to that happiness, and to have it remembered
among men, that after her pilgrimage beyond the
seas, what was earthly of this united pair had been
permitted to be united beneath the same earth.
But when this emptiness had through the fulness
of Thy goodness begun to cease in her heart, I
knew not, and rejoiced admiring what she had so
disclosed to me, though indeed in that our discourse
also in the window, when she said, " What do I

Husband and Wife 181

here any longer ? " there appeared no desire of
dying in her own country.' 1

MATTHEW ARNOLD

«

Monica's Last Prayer

1 " Ah, could thy grave at home, at Carthage, be ! "
" Care not for that, and lay me where I fall !
Everywhere heard will be the judgment call I
But at God's altar, Oh I remember me."
Thus Monica, and died in Italy.
Yet fervent had her longing been, through all
Her course, for home at last, and burial
With her own husband, by the Libyan sea.
Had been ! but at the end, to her pure soul
All tie with all beside seem'd vain and cheap,
And union before God the only care.
Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole.
Yet we her memory, as she pray'd, will keep,
Keep by this : Life in God, and union there !

TENNYSON

Arthur says to Guinevere at their final meeting :

4 Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul,
And so thou lean on our fair father Christ,
Hereafter in that world where all are pure
We two may meet before high God, and thou
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know

Confessions of St. Augustine. Dr. Pusey's translation.

1 82 Reunion in Eternity

I am thine husband — not a smaller soul,
Nor Lancelot, nor another. Leave me that,
I charge thee, my last hope.'

JOHN RUSKIN

To George Richmond on the loss of his wife,
Ruskin wrote in January 1881 :—

' My personal sorrow is haggard with terror for
the future to you, and a cruel sense of the departure
of all things that you loved in this the Head of them
—and I do not know how far you will be able, in
the knowledge of your own dearness to your chil
dren and your friends, to take from them what they
may yet be able to give you of twilight gladness,
and peace in waiting for the day of Restoration—
of all things — and of her. Men say the time is
near — a day is near, at least, of such trial of the
spirits of all flesh as may well be called one of
Judgment. I thank God that I am able still —
with you — to be among those that Watch for the
Morning — and still able to be thankful beside the
places of rest of those whom I have loved, to
whom Christ has said : " Arise, thou, my fair one —
and come away." ' x

1 Life of Ruskin, by Sir E. T. Cook, vol. ii. p. 561.

Husband and Wife 183

RUSKIN'S MOTHER

Ruskin's mother was ninety when she died. ' She
was laid to rest beside her husband, whom she trusted
to see again — " not to be near him," she had said,
" not to be so high in heaven, but content if she
might only see him." ' l

FREDERIC OZANAM

When Fre*de*ric Ozanam was dying, he drew up
a brief summary of his will, in which he referred
with the utmost tenderness to his wife.

' I thank her, I bless her, and I await her in
heaven. There only shall I be able to give her back
all the love she merits.' 2

GEORGE HERBERT'S WIDOW

George Herbert's widow said :—

' O that I had, like holy Mary, the mother of
Jesus, treasured up all his sayings in my heart !
But since I have not been able to do that, I will
labour to live like him, that where he now is I may
be also.'

1 Life ofRuskin, by Sir E. T. Cook, vol. ii. p. 221.

2 Frederic Ozanam d'apres sa Correspondance, par Mgr.
Baunard (1912), p. 563.

184 Reunion in Eternity

BISHOP WILKINSON

Bishop G. H. Wilkinson wrote, after the death of
his wife : ' We knew that she departed to be with
Christ — in Christ — living to Christ — in that quiet
home where no wind nor storm could ever disturb
or depress, where the thunder's roar and the
lightning's flash would no more make her nervous
—gone before to wait till each of her sons and
daughters, and he by whom these words are written,
shall have finished their work on earth, and, washed
from their sins in His blood and renewed by His
Spirit, shall be for ever reunited with her.' l

Many years after the death of his wife, Bishop
Wilkinson wrote to a bereaved friend :—

' The Blessed Communion of Saints is indeed a
mystery — but a mystery the truth of which we
realise more and more as the years roll by. Soon
after my own sorrow came — when life was rather
hard — I was staying near your Devonshire home,
and I went out one moonlight night. There was
before me a tall tree with many branches. Some in
the light, some in the shadow. By what I have

1 Life of Bishop G. H. Wilkinson, vol. i. p. 348. -

Husband and Wife 185

always felt to be a merciful inspiration from God,
I suddenly realised that all those branches were one
and all united to each other. Some were in the
light, some in the shadow ; but they were all one
as part of the tree. So I saw for life that she whom
I loved, who was in the light, was as much one with
me, who was left in the shadowland of earth, as
we had been one when we were both on earth — as
we should be one when, please God, we were both
in the bright land of the Eternal Kingdom.' x

CHARLES KINGSLEY

We read in Charles Kingsley's Life that in his
last weeks he ministered with tenderest affection
to his wife who lay dangerously ill. The Angel of
Death, for the first time in thirty-one years, seemed
hovering over Eversley Rectory.

4 It is not darkness you are going to,' he said, ' for
God is light. It is not lonely, for Christ is with
you. It is not an unknown country, for Christ
is there.' And when the dreary interval before
reunion was mentioned, he dwelt on the possibility
of all consciousness of Time being so destroyed that
what would be long years to the survivor might

1 Life of Bishop G. H. Wilkinson, vol. ii. 299, 300.

1 86 Reunion in Eternity

be only a moment to the separated soul that had
passed over the River of Death.

Over the grave in Eversley Churchyard, Kingsley's
widow placed a white marble cross, on which, under
a spray of his favourite passion-flower, are the words
of his choice, the story of his life :—

' Amavimus, Amamus, Amabimus.'

And above them, circling round the cross, ' God
is love,' the keystone of his faith.

For the last two days before his departure
Kingsley sent no messages to his wife, who was
lying seriously ill in another room, for he thought
she was gone, and that the dream of his life was ful
filled of their dying together. 4 Under this im
pression, probably, when the faithful family nurse
left his wife for a moment to come to her dying
master, he said : " Ah, dear nurse, and I too, am
come to an end ; it is all right — all as it should be,"
and closed his eyes again.'

F. D. MAURICE

F. D. Maurice wrote on All Saints' Day, 1847,
with reference to his first wife, the sister-in-law of
John Sterling :—

Husband and Wife 187

4 This day reminds me that we have a host of
invisible friends and each one of the members has,
I believe and feel assured, special ministries for
those who have been loved on earth. It is a
thought which I can more easily realise for others
than myself, and perhaps that is right. The
selfish gratification would be too strong, the sense
of evil desert not strong enough, if I could feel
intensely I was an object of care and sympathy to
any spirit. I am content or nearly content, to be
without the vivid impression of any such blessed
ness. Yet sometimes when I find how the deepest
truths, which are presented to me as the satisfaction
of all that the Church needs and that I need, connect
themselves with words she used to speak to me,
how great reconciling principles, which, if I could
declare them, might set the age free from some of
its divisions, while they healed at the same time
the schisms in families and the wounds in individual
hearts, seem often still taught me by her, I cannot
but feel as if perhaps it is not only a great poet who
has his Beatrice, at once to bless earth and show
him Heaven, but as if such a guide and helper might
be granted to the dullest of earth's pilgrims, if he
has not quite lost the desire for God and his true

1 88 Reunion in Eternity

home. At least I would hope that such a blessing
might belong to my boys — the sense of the presence
of an unseen mother and the help of her love in
dark hours.'

Again :—

4 1 always say to myself when the question
presents itself, Shall we recognise each other
hereafter ? Ah, how little we have recognised each
other here ! May not that be the first great step
in recognition ? I hope and trust that a number
of hindrances to recognition and sympathy will be
taken away, and that those who have had most
of the taste of love will find that it is only the
foretaste ; that as it had its first seed, so it has its
full fruit in the Kingdom of God.' *

LAURA LYTTELTON

Laura Tennant wrote before marriage to her
betrothed husband, Alfred Lyttelton :—

' And if anything happens, Alfred, before or
after — if you are sad and all the mirage of many
dreamed-of joys fades into sterner stuff, remember
how in the silence — the half -hour of Silence — your

1 Lije of F. D. Maurice, vol. ii. p. 587.

Husband and Wife 189

footsteps coining near — or — God forbid that it
should be so — fainting into the distance — will be
one of the sounds most listened for in " the vasty
Halls of Death "—only I think it should be life.
Oh ! if I die first, think of me listening for the
great strong echo of those strides — think of how I
used to love them on earth — think of how I shall
love them in Heaven ; and how the sound is dearer
to me than the choir of God.' x

Laura Tennant and Alfred Lyttelton were married
on May 21, 1885. The short married life was an
unbroken honeymoon . Laura' s sister Margot called
on her early in the following April. The young wife
said during a confidential talk that she was pretty
sure she would die when her baby was born, and,
with this in view, she had written her will, adding,
4 When I am dead and all of you round me in the
room, I want you there and then to read this will
out loud ; say I told you to, and then give it to
Alfred — swear you won't forget.' A few days
afterwards her child was born, and then, as she had
anticipated, she passed away. The last part of her
farewell message was as follows :—

Alfred Lyttelton: An Account of his Life, p. 135.

1 90 Reunion in Eternity

4 So few women have been as happy as I have
been every hour since I married, so few have had
such a wonderful sky of love for their common
atmosphere, that perhaps it will seem strange,
when I write down, that the sadness of death and
parting is greatly lessened to me by the fact of my
consciousness of the eternal indivisible oneness' cf
Alfred and me — I feel as long as he is down here — I
must be here, silently, secretly sitting beside him,
as I do every evening now, however much my soul
is on the other side — and that if Alfred too were to
die, we should be as we were on earth — love as we
did this year — only fuller, quicker, deeper than
ever, with a purer passion and a wiser worship.
Only in the meantime whilst my body is hid from
him, and my eyes cannot see him, let my trivial
toys be his till the morning comes, when nothing
will matter because all is spirit.'

DR. MARTINEAU

Dr. Martineau wrote to Professor Knight in
1877, when Mrs. Martineau's health was fast de
clining :—

4 Our simple and sacred duty is to guide her
descending steps over whatever grass and flowers

Husband and Wife 191

we can find, and soothe the last embrace with the
inward calm of trust and love. It is but a brief
separation ; the emigrant ship will soon be sent
for me too ; and higher work — as I firmly hope
through all the sadness of experience — be found
for us together in another country, even a heavenly.'

After the closing scenes, Dr. Martineau wrote to
another friend, the Rev. J. Hamilton Thorn :—

' The gathering evening shadows lie more gently
upon us ; and we may let our dear ones pass first
to the new morning. The Everlasting Love keeps
us safe for each other, whether there or here.' l

To another friend he wrote :-—

1 The long and painful watching through the
summer and autumn has ended as the poor sufferer
herself could not but wish ; and we surrender that
dear life with thankfulness and perfect trust, till
the Infinite Love in which we live and die shall
resume the interrupted communion.' 2

In letters to bereaved friends, Dr. Martineau
never hesitated to console them with the hope of
reunion.

1 Life and Letters of James Martineau, vol. ii. pp. 37, 39.

2 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 97.

1 92 Reunion in Eternity

GEORGE MACDONALD

In Sir Gibbie, George Macdonald wrote :—
' I fancy many when they die will find them
selves more at home than they were in this world.'

4 " I 'm growin' terrible auld, Janet," said
Robert. " It 's a sair thing this auld age, an' I
canna bring mysel' content wi' 't. Ye see, I haene,
been used till 't."

c " That 's true, Robert," answered Janet. " Gi'en
we had been born auld, we micht by this time
hae been at hame wi' 't. But syne what wad
hae come o' the gran' delicht o' seein' auld age rin
hirplin awa' frae the face o' the Auncient o' Days ? "

4 " Eh 1 but I wuss I may hae ye there, Janet,
for I kenna what I wad do wantin' ye. I wad be
unco stray up yon'er, gi'en I had to gang my lane,
an' no you to refar till, 'at kens the wy's o' the
place."

4 " I ken no more about the wy's o' the place nor
yersel', Robert, though I 'm thinkin' they '11 be
unco quaiet an' sensible, seem' 'at a' there maun
be gentle fowk. It 's eneuch to me 'at I '11 be i'

Husband and Wife 193

the hoose o' my Maister's father ; an' my Maister
was weel content to gang to that hoose ; an' it
maun be something by ordinar' 'at was fit for him.
But puir simple fowk like oorsel's '11 hae no need
to hing down the heid an' luik like gowks 'at
disna ken mainners. Bairns are no expeckit to
ken a' the w'ys o' a muckle hoose 'at they hae
never been intil i' their lives afore."

' " It 's no that a'thegither 'at tribles me,
Janet ; it 's mair 'at I '11 be expeckit to sing an'
luik pleased -like, an' I div not ken hoo it '11 be
poassible, an' you naegait 'ithin my sicht or my
cry, or the hearin' o"my ears."

4 " Div ye believe this, Robert — 'at we 're a'
ane, jist ane, in Christ Jesus ? "

' " I canna weel say. I 'm no denyin' naething
'at the buik tells me ; ye ken me better nor that,
Janet ; but there 's mony a thing it says 'at I
dinna ken whether I believe 't 'at my ain han', or
whether it be only at a' thing 'at ye believe, Janet,
's jist to me as gien I believet it mysel' ; an' that 's
a sair thought, for a man canna be savet e'en by
the proxy o' 's ain wife."

4 " Weel, ye 're just muckle whaur I fin' mysel'
whiles, Robert ; an' I comfort mysel' wi' the houp

N

194 Reunion in Eternity

'at we '11 ken the thing there, 'at maybe we 're but
try in' to believe here. But ony gait ye hae pruv 't
weel 'at you an' me 's ane, Robert. Noo we ken
frae Scriptur' 'at the Maister cam to mak aye ane
o' them 'at was at twa ; an' we ken also 'at he con
quered Deith ; sae he wad never lat Deith mak the
ane 'at he had made ane, intil twa again ; it 's no
rizon to think it. For oucht I ken, what luiks like
a gangin' awa may be a comin' nearer. An' ther?
may be wy's o' comin' nearer till ane anither up
yon'er 'at we ken naething aboot doon here.'

' " Hoot, Janet ! ye ken there 's naither merry in
nor giein' in merriage there."

4 " Wha was say in' ony thing aboot merry in' 01
giein' in merriage, Robert ? Is that to say 'at you
an' me 's to be no more to ane anither nor ither
fowk ? Nor it 's no to say 'at 'cause merriage is
no the w'y o' the country, 'at there 's to be naething
better i' the place o' 't."

' " What garred the Maister say ony thing aboot
it than ? "

' " Jist 'cause they plaguit him wi' speirin'. He
wad never hae opened his moo' anent it — it wasna
ane o' his subjec's — gien it hadna been 'at a wheen

Husband and Wife 195

pride-prankit beuk-fowk 'at didna believe there
was ony angels, or speerits o' ony kin', but said 'at
a man ance deid was aye an' a'thegither deid, an'
yet preten'it to believe in God HimseF for a' that,
thoucht to bleck (nonplus) the Maister wi' speirin'
whilk o' saiven a puir body 'at had been garred
merry them a', wad be the wife o' whan they gat
up again."

' " A body micht think it wad be left to herseP to
say," suggested Robert. " She had come throu'
eneuch to hae some claim to be considert."

" ' She maun hae been a richt guid ane," said
Janet, " gien ilk ane o' the saiven wad be wantin'
her again. But I 's warran' she kenned weel
eneuch whilk o5 them was her ain."

STOPFORD BROOKE

Stopford Brooke wrote to his widowed mother
after the death of his father in 1882 :—

4 1 have never seen so beautiful a deathbed, none
so quiet, so at rest, so individual, so wrapt in God.
I hope there is a tender place in your heart, for that
is the first and deepest thing I should imagine you
would feel. It was not like death at all. It was
going to sleep for a little on earth to waken into

196 Reunion in Eternity

glorious life. I think of him now as wrapt in en
joyment, as in eternal youth, all ailments and
sorrows for ever lost, and as hoping for the time
when you will " join him," and often and oftm
as I watched him lying there, I said to myself,
" Anna is waiting for him, to welcome him. He
will not feel it strange in the new land." I feel it
strange to see him no more here, and I am very
sorry to miss his dear voice and no more to khs
the white smooth forehead, always so attractive ;
but my own grief vanishes wholly away in joy ths t
he is so happy, so full of radiant delight, having
life no longer burdened with distress, but able now
to be as light and vivid and as young as in the fai-
off days when he wooed you by the Swilly, amon;r
the alders which you and I walked among som?
years ago after I had lost Emma.' x

CANON AND MRS. DREW

The following epitaph from Winchester Cathedral
was inscribed by Mrs. Drew on the wall of Ha warder
Church in memory of her husband, the late Canor
Drew : —

k I, nimium dilecte ; Deus vocat ; I, bona nostrae
Pars animae ; moerens altera, disce sequi.'

* Life and Letters of Stopford Brooke, vol. ii. p. 392.

Husband and Wife 197

Mr. George Wyndham translated the elegiac
couplet thus : —

' Lead on, too well-beloved ; go, happy part
Of our one soul ; God calls ; but teach my heart,
Mourning alone, to follow where thou art.'

Mr. J. W. Mackail preferred the following :—

4 Pass hence, beloved, at the call divine,

Leaving the path we twain as one have trod —
Pass, and the soul that still is one with thine
Thro' grief shall learn to follow thee to God.' l

T. E. BROWN

T. E. Brown wrote to a bereaved friend : —
4 My dear fellow-sufferer, what is it after all ?
why this sinking of the heart, this fainting, sorrow
ing of the spirit ? There is no separation ; life
is continuous. All that was stable and good, good
and therefore stable, in our union with the loved one,
is unquestionably permanent, will endure for ever.
It cannot be otherwise. Can you conceive yourself
as existing at all without her ? No, you can't ;
well, then, it follows that you don't, and never will.
The process of blending has been too complete to
admit of separation. This is God's blessing on

1 Some Hawarden Letters, pp. 346-8.

198 Reunion in Eternity

perfect unions. But " the climbing mother "
(King Lear) will rise unbidden, and what shall we
do ? Corrigere est nefas, so said poor Horace ;
there is a clenching of the teeth, on those words.
Resignation then, O Flaccus, try that ? and indeed
he does with his levins fit patientia. But resigna
tion to what ? Some dark fate with dumb lips
and eyes that are inscrutable ? No, but to a kind

and gracious Father.'

/

MAJOR REDMOND

The heroic Major Redmond, M.P., who was
killed in the battle of Messines (June 1917) left a
statement in the keeping of his solicitor in Ireland.
It opened with these words : ' If I should die
abroad, I will give my wife my last thought and
love, and ask her to pray that we may meet here
after.'

DINAH MORRIS IN c ADAM BEDE '

Dinah Morris in Adam Bede comforts Lisbeth in
her bereavement with the words of David, ' I shall
go to him, but he shall not return to me.' Thias
Bede had been drowned in the Willow Brook, and
the widow had refused comfort from her sons.

Husband and Wife 199

Dinah's gentle presence charmed away her sorrow
ful mood.

' There,' said Dinah, ' now the kitchen looks tidy,
and now, dear mother — for I 'm your daughter to
night, you know — I should like you to wash your
face and have a clean cap on. Do you remember
what David did, when God took away his child
from him ? While the child was yet alive he fasted
and prayed to God to spare it, and he would neither
eat nor drink, but lay on the ground all night, be
seeching God for the child. But when he knew it
was dead, he rose up from the ground and washed
and anointed himself, and changed his clothes and
ate and drank ; and when they asked him how it
was that he seemed to have left off grieving now the
child was dead, he said, " While the child was yet
alive, I fasted and wept ; for I said, Who can tell
whether God will be gracious to me, that the child
may live ? But now he is dead, wherefore should
I fast ? Can I bring him back again ? I shall go
to him, but he shall not return to me."

4 " Eh, that 's a true word," said Lisbeth. " Yea,
my old man wonna come back to me, but I shall go
to him — the sooner the better. Well, ye may do
as ye like wi' me : there 's a clean cap in that drawer,

2OO Reunion in Eternity

and I '11 go i' the back kitchen and wash my face.
An' Seth, thee may'st reach down Adam's new Bible
wi' th' picters in, an' she shall read us a chapter.
Eh, I like them words. I shall go to him, but he
wonna come back to me.'

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

Mrs. Humphry Ward says of the widowed
Catherine Elsmere :—

'. Every Sunday morning, with her child beside
her, she worshipped in the old ways ; every Sunday
afternoon saw her black- veiled figure sitting motion
less in a corner of the Elgood Street Hall. In the
week she gave all her time and money to the various
works of charity which Robert had started. But
she held her peace. Many were grateful to her,
some loved her ; none understood her. She lived
for one hope only ; and the years passed all too

slowly.'

GEORGE MEREDITH

In the epilogue to George Meredith's novel
Vittoria, we are told how the beautiful heroine bore
the death of her husband, Count Carlo Ammiani,
who perished in an attempt to save his cousin and
comrade, Angelo :—

Husband and Wife 201

4 Merthyr delivered the burden of death to
Vittoria. Her soul had crossed the darkness of the
river of death in that quiet agony preceding the
revelation of her Maker's will, and she drew her
dead husband to her bosom and kissed him on the
eyes and the forehead, not as one who had quite
gone away from her, but as one who lay upon
another shore whither she would come.'

LONGFELLOW

Longfellow, in one of his later poems, ' Via
Solitaria,' dwells on the loneliness of the bereaved
husband and his longing for reunion :—

' I live, O lost one ! for the living

Who drew their earliest life from thee,
And wait, until with glad thanksgiving
I shall be free.

For life to me is as a station

Wherein apart a traveller stands,
One absent long from home and nation
In other lands.

And I, as he who stands and listens,

Amid the twilight's chill and gloom,
To hear, approaching in the distance
The train for home.

2O2 Reunion in Eternity

For death shall bring another mating,

Beyond the shadows of the tomb,
On yonder shores a bride is waiting
Until I come.

On yonder shores are children playing,
And there — oh ! vision of delight —
I see the child and mother straying
In robes of white.

Thou, then, the longing heart that breakest,

Stealing the treasures one by one,
I '11 call thee blessed when thou makest
The parted — one.'

ROBERT BROWNING
(Epilogue to Fifine at the Fair)
The Householder

4 Savage I was sitting in my house, late, lone ;

Dreary, weary with the long day's work ;
Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone ;

Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like a Turk ;
When, in a moment, just a knock, call, cry,

Half a pang and all a rapture, there again were we !
;t What, and is it really you again ? " quoth I :

" I again, what else did you expect ? " quoth She.

Husband and Wife 203

ii
" Never mind, hie away from the old house —

Every crumbling brick embrowned with sin and

shame !
Quick, in its corners ere certain shapes arouse :

Let them — every devil of the night — lay claim,
Make and mend, or rap and rend, for me ! Good-bye !

God be their guard from disturbance at their glee,
Till, crash, comes down the carcass in a heap ! "

quoth I :

" Nay, but there 's. a decency required ! " quoth
She.

in

" Ah, but if you knew how time has dragged, days,

nights !
All the neighbour-talk with man and maid — such

men !

All the fuss and trouble of street-sounds, window-
sights :
All the worry of flapping door and echoing roof ;

and then,
All the fancies „ . . who were they had leave, dared try

Darker arts that almost struck despair in me ?
If you knew but how I dwelt down here ! " quoth I :
" And was I so better off up there ? " quoth She.

IV

" Help and get it over ! Re-united to his wife

(How draw up the paper lets the parish-people
know ?)

Lies M., or N., departed from this lifef

Day the this or that, month and year the so and so.

204 Reunion in Eternity

What i' the way of final flourish ? Prose, verse ?

Try!

Affliction sore long time he bore, or, what is it to be ft
Till God did please to grant him ease. Do end ! " quoth

I.

" I end with — Love is all and Death is nought ! "
quoth She.'

JAMES GILMOUR, OF MONGOLIA

The great missionary James Gilmour, of Mongolia,
lost his beloved wife at Peking. In his diary he
wrote :—

' Emily saw all the women. She felt very weak
to-day. Remarked at 7 P.M. : ' Well, Jamie,
I am going, I suppose. I '11 soon see you there.
It won't be long.' I said she would not want me
much there. She said fondly she would. ' I
think I '11 sit at the gate and look for you coming.'

In a letter to his children's uncle in Scotland, to
whom Mr. Gilmour had decided to entrust the two
boys after their mother's death, he writes :—

' Oh, it is hard to think of them going off over the
world in that motherless fashion ! We were at
mamma's grave yesterday for the first time since
September 21. We sang " There's a land that is
fairer than day," in Chinese, and also a Chinese

Husband and Wife 205

hymn we have here with a chorus, which says,
" We '11 soon go and see them in our heavenly
home," and in English, " There is a happy land."
The children and I have no reluctance in speaking
of mamma, and we don't think of her as here or
buried, but as in a fine place, happy and well.'

In a letter to his father, Mr. Gilmour writes :—

4 Let us not be disturbed at all about our not
having more communication. I pray often for
you and remember you more frequently still, and
feel more and more that earth is a shifting scene,
that here we have no permanent place, that heaven
is our home, that your wife — my dear mother — has
gone there, that my wife has gone there and is now
in the Golden City, and that, sooner or later, you
and I will be there, and that, when there, we '11
have plenty of time to sit about and talk all to
gether in a company.'

P. B. MARSTON

' It must have been for one of us, my own,
To drink this cup and eat this bitter bread.
Had not my tears upon thy face been shed,
Thy tears had dropped on mine ; if I alone

206 Reunion in Eternity

Did not walk now, thy spirit would have known
My loneliness, and did my feet not tread
This weary path and steep, thy feet had bled

For mine, and thy mouth had for mine made moan ;
And so it comforts me, yea, not in vain,

To think of thy eternity of sleep,

To know thine eyes are tearless though mine weep :
And when this cup's last bitterness I drain,

One thought shall still its primal sweetness keep —

Thou hadst the peace and I the undying pain.

WILLIAM BARNES

In his poem ' Flora ta Veris Lachrymis,' the last
stanza : —

* Thy voice is still I lov'd to hear,
Thy voice is lost I held so dear.
Since death unlocks thy hand from mine,
No love awaits me such as thine ;
Oh ! boon the hardest to resign !
But if we meet again at last
In heav'n, I little care how fast
My life may now be waning.'

DR. PUSEY

In his Spiritual Letters : ' To a husband on the
death of his wife ' :—

4 You have, I trust, had every consolation which
you could have had. At our age, partings cannot

Husband and Wife 207

be for long ; we have only to prepare for the Great

Meeting.'

BISHOP CREIGHTON

To Clementina Lady Lilford, Bishop Creighton
wrote : —

1 1 fear that life will seem to you dreary and empty
for some time to come. Indeed in your case it has
suddenly been emptied of its immediate contents.
New interests can only slowly form ; and they will
form round the consciousness that his character
and person are an abiding possession, with a power
to renew. At first the sense of bereavement and of
loss is paramount . . . you have first to face the
fact of an irreparable loss. But it is not a mere
loss ; there is much that remains. The spirit
survives, and is more clearly seen and more vividly
understood. As you served the man while he was
here, and rejoiced in his companionship ; so it is
possible to serve still the abiding principles of his
life — and find comfort in spiritual communing with
it, a part of the eternal life of the world.

' I know that this seems cold and intangible. We
do not know where to turn or what to do or think ;
but processes are going on, healing processes of
grace, which slowly make themselves manifest.

208 Reunion in Eternity

' There is a beautiful sonnet of Petrarch, who sees
Laura in heaven amongst the angels ; she walks
amongst them, but from time to time turns her head
and looks behind and seems to be waiting for him :

" Wherefore I raise to heaven my heart and mind
Because I hear her bid me only haste."

There remains a spell of life before the reunion ;
it is not a desert, but has its beauties and its lessons.
Can you think that you are separated from him for
a time that you may learn to know him better \
that you may learn something more to tell him
hereafter — something that he taught you to learn,
but which you had not time to learn while he was
with you, because you were too busied with him ? '

DR. HENRY KING

Dr. Henry King (1592-1669), Bishop of Chichester.
4 The Exequy ' :

' Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed,
Never to be disquieted !
Stay for me there ; I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale ...
The thought of this bids me go on,
And wait my dissolution,

Husband and Wife 209

With hope and comfort. Dear (forgive
The crime), I am content to live
Divided, with but half a heart,
Till we shall meet and never part.'

THE STORY OF WILLIAM AND LUCY SMITH

The stone inscribed with her husband's name
bears an added inscription, which she had dictated :

' To the memory also of

" his dear wife Lucy "
Who regained him here in life,
Dec. 14, 1881.

" Love is of God." '

MRS. GROTE
A friend of Mrs. Grote wrote to the Spectator :—

It would probably be too much to say that she
ever became a devout woman, but her recognition
of the Divine will was habitual, and found expression
in phrases which were especially significant on the
lips of one so naturally abhorrent of cant. I shall
not easily forget one Sunday night, at Shiere, when
our conversation turned upon the grounds for hope
in a life beyond the grave, how simply and earnestly
she avowed her trust in it, and in the reunion for
which she longed.

o

2io Reunion in Eternity

ROBERT BROWNING
' PROSPICE '

4 The elements' rage, the fiend voices that rave ,

Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,

Then a light, then thy breast.
O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again,

And with God be the rest ! '

VII
FRIENDS

PART I.— TEACHERS AND GREAT ONES

Spenser had a vision of sweet companionship in the heavenly
Jerusalem :

' As he thereon stood gazing, he might see
The blessed angels to and fro descend
From highest heaven, in gladsome com panic,
And with great joy into that citie wend
As commonly as friend does with his friend. ' l

'The Lamb's apostles there
I might with joy behold,
The harpers I might hear
Harping on harps of gold.'

S. GROSSMAN.

' Thou shalt look about, and see
Thousands of crown'd soules throng to be
Themselves thy crown.'

RICHARD CRASHAW ON ST. TERESA.

Gerald Massey's ballad, ' Sir RichardGrenville'sLast Fight/ends :
' Old Heroes who could grandly do,

As they could greatly dare ;
A vesture, very glorious,

Their shining spirits wear,
Of noble deeds ! God give us grace,
That we may see such face to face,
In one great day that comes apace.'

1 The Faerie tyueene, i. x. 56.

211

212 Reunion in Eternity

' We must come to see that man is eternal and divine in his
own right, and that he is working towards the only possible
and conceivable heaven, — a republic of pure, wise, loving,
energetic spirits, rising to ever completer harmony and closer
intimacy with each other.' THOMAS DAVIDSON.*

RICHARD BAXTER

RICHARD BAXTER names among the ' comfortable
adjuncts ' of the ' Saints' Everlasting Rest,5 that
it is the fellowship of the blessed saints and angels
of God. ' Not so singular will the Christian be as
to be solitary. Though it be proper to the saint >
only, yet it is common to all the saints. For wha :
is it but an association of blessed spirits in God ;
a corporation of perfected saints whereof Chrisi;
is the Head ; the communion of saints completed V
. . . Though the strings receive not their sounc
and sweetness from each other, yet their, concur
rence causeth that harmony which could not be
by one alone. For those that have prayed and
fasted and wept and watched and waited together,
now to joy and enjoy and praise together, methinks
should much advance their pleasure. . . . Certain
I am of this, fellow-Christians, that as we have been
together in the labour, duty, danger and distress,

1 Memoirs of Thomas Davidson, the Wandering Scholar, by
William Knight, p. 151.

Friends 213

so shall we be in the great recompense and deliver
ance.'

Baxter, who lived in an age of persecution, con
soled himself with thoughts of reunion.

' Oh, when I look in the faces of the precious
people of God, and believing, think of this day, what
a refreshing thought is it ? Shall we not there
remember, think you, the pikes which we passed
through here ; our fellowship in duty and in suffer
ings ; how oft our groans made, as it were, one
sound, our conjunct tears but one stream, and our
conjunct desires but one prayer ? And now all
our praises shall make up one melody ; and all
our churches one church ; and all ourselves but one
body ; for we shall be one in Christ, even as He
and the Father are one.' l

JOHN MILTON

Milton imagines that Lycidas is received by holy
spirits in the ' blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.'

' There entertain him all the saints above.
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and, singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.'

1 The Saints Everlasting Rest.

214 Reunion in Eternity

ST. TERESA

The Spanish Franciscan Reformer of the sixteenth
century, St. Peter of Alcantara, blessed the work
of St. Teresa, the great Carmelite, in his closing
days. ' His end was like his life,' wrote Teresa,
' preaching and admonishing his friars. As the
end drew near, he repeated the Psalm, Laetatus sum
in his quae dicta sunt mihi, and then kneeling died '
At the moment when he expired he appeared to her
in great glory, and said he was going to rest. ' It
appears to me,' added Teresa, 'that he consoles
me more than when he was here with me.' l

ADMIRAL GRAVINA

When Gravina, the admiral who commanded the
Spanish ships at the battle of Trafalgar, was nearing
his end, he turned to the doctor who was attending
him and said : ' I am a dying man, but I hope and
trust that I am going to join the greatest hero the
world almost ever produced.' 'This,' says Mr.
•Archibald Hurd, ' was the last thought of that
seaman on his death-bed ; his mind turned to
Nelson, the brother-in-arms of the great sea-family

1 Mrs. Cuiminghame Graham's Life of St. Tere&a, p. 228.

Friends 215

who, under another national flag, had defeated
him, and he found consolation in the belief that
he would join him.' 1

DEAN STANLEY

When a friend thanked Dean Stanley for his
vivid picture of the noble Judas Maccabaeus, the
reply came : 4 Yes, I have done my best for him,'
and, drawing his slight form together, and looking
up as if he saw the mighty shade of the Jewish
patriot approaching, the Dean added : ' I hope
he will be kind to me when we meet in another
world.'

DR. JOHN BROWN

Dr. John Brown wrote in his Horae Subsecivae
paper on Dr. Chalmers :—

' We cannot help following him, whose loss we
now mourn, into that region, and figuring to our
selves his great, childlike spirit, when ... he is
admitted into the goodly fellowship of the apostles —
the glorious company of the prophets — the noble
army of martyrs — the general assembly of just
men — and beholds with his loving eyes the myriads
of " little ones," outnumbering their elders as the

1 Ordeal by $ea, by Archibald Hurd, p. 3.

216 Reunion in Eternity

dust of the stars with which the galaxy is filled
exceeds in multitude the hosts of heaven.'

4 Every one must have trembled when reading
that passage in Isaiah, in which Hell is described
as moved to meet Lucifer at his coming : there is
not in human language anything more sublime in
conception, more exquisite in expression ; it has
on it the light of the terrible crystal. But may we
not reverse the scene ? May we not imagine, when
a great and good man — a son of the morning — enters
on his rest, that Heaven would move itself to meet
him at his coming ? That it would stir up its dead,
even all the chief ones of the earth, and that the
kings of the nations would arise each one from his
throne to welcome their brother ? that those who
saw him would " narrowly consider him," and say,
" Is this he who moved nations, enlightened and
bettered his fellows, and whom the great Task
master welcomes with ' Well done ! '

MARGARET FULLER

Margaret Fuller wrote of Emerson :—
4 My inmost heart blesses the fate that gave me
birth in the same clime and time, and that has

Friends 217

drawn me into such a close bond with him as, it
is my hopeful faith, will never be broken, but from
sphere to sphere ever be hallowed. When I look
forward to eternal growth, I am always aware that
I am far larger and deeper for him.'

BISHOP EDWARD KING

Bishop King of Lincoln wrote to a friend in sorrow :
4 Please God, in Paradise we may meet those whose
prayers and early death may have helped to bring
us there. May you, by God's blessing, one day join
them, and then you will know that all your pain
and love and sorrow were not in vain.' l

B. M.

(From a < Parable of Hope,' by « B. M.')

'And, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee.'
— Acts xxvii. 24.

4 At that dim mysterious Hour of Peace,
That Dawn of death in which tears must cease,
Ere we pass from the faintly moaning Sea
To the Haven that shineth glad and free,
Still Love will pray from the shadowy Sea,
" Save, Master, the souls that sail with me ! "

And the Lord will hear

In His kingdom near,
And send her a word of hope and cheer.

1 Spiritual Letters.

2i 8 Reunion in Eternity

He giveth us peace at the last, they say,

And more than all for which Love can pray :

Will He send a sweet Angel to say to me, —

4 ' Go in peace, to the Land of the joyful and free

For God hath given this day to thee

The souls thou hast prayed for steadfastly ?

" Go in peace, this day, to the Haven wide ;
Thou shalt see His face and be satisfied ;
Thou shalt know His heart and rest in Him
With a peace that passeth thy knowledge dim
Not for thyself alone, but for all
Thy heart hath yearned for, great and small.

" And some shall enter the Haven wide,
Full-sail, on the breast of a glorious tide ;

And some shall come

To our golden Home

Sore battered and spent from an angry sea ;
But thine heart shall count them, one by one,
And leap for joy as they greet the Sun,
Till God has gathered them all to thee." '

MRS. OLIPHANT

Mrs. Oliphant wrote, shortly before her death,
to Mrs. Richmond Ritchie (February 16, 1897) :—

' You '11 go to see George Macdonald — will you
not ? at Bordighera. Tell him I am not so patient
as he is, but longing very much for the new chapter
of life, where I hope we shall meet and talk all
things over with better light upon them than here.'

PART II.— PERSONAL FRIENDS

( Without friends no one would choose to live, though he
possessed all other good things.' — ARISTOTLE.

( A day for toil, an hour for sport,
But for a friend is life too short.'
EMERSON.

' It is a pity, saith Mr. Bolton, that Christians should ever
meet together without some talk of their meeting in heaven, or
the way to it, before they part.' — RICHARD BAXTKR.

' I believe in an active, human life, beyond death as before it,
an uninterrupted human life. 1 believe in no waiting in the
grave, and in no vague effluence of spirit in a formless vapour.'

E. B. BROWNING.

SAINT BERNARD AND ABBOT SUGER

ST. BERNARD thus addressed his dear and most
intimate friend Suger, Abbot of St. Denys.

' That peace awaiteth thee which passeth all
understanding. The righteous await for thee to
behold thee receive thy reward. The joy of thy
Lord awaiteth thee. And I, my dearest friend,
am anxiously desiring to see thee, that the blessing
of one about to die may come upon me. And
since no one can choose the way he would traverse,
I dare not, as I am not certain, promise to come of
a surety ; but though I do not yet see how I can

219

22O Reunion in Eternity

come, I do quite what I can. Perchance I may
come : perchance I may not come. But whichever
of these it may be, I have loved thee from the very
first, and shall love thee onwards unceasingly. I
say, with faithfulness, I cannot lose so loved 2
friend, even at the last. To me he doth not die.
but he goeth on before, he to whose soul mine own
hath clung and hath been cemented with a hold
which will not be unloosed, and with a chain which
cannot be broken. But remember me when thou
shalt have gone whither thou goest before me, so
that it may be granted to me to follow thee and to
come to thee. Until then in no way think that
thy sweet memory may depart from me, though thy
presence is withdrawn from thy grieving friends.
God is, however, able to give thee to us in answer
to our prayers, and to preserve thee for us who
have need of thee ; of this we must assuredly have
no doubt.'

Of Saint Victor, Bernard wrote : —

4 The veteran soldier resteth now in due sweetness
and security ; secure indeed as to himself, but
anxious for us. It is not a land of forgetfulness,
that which the soul of Victor inhabiteth ; it is not a

Friends 221

land of toil, in which he becometh wholly absorbed ;
it is not indeed earth, but heaven. Will a celestial
habitation harden the souls of those whom it
receiveth, or deprive them of memory, or de
spoil them of kindness ? Brothers, the breadth of
heaven dilateth, not narroweth, hearts; exhilarateth
minds, not alienateth them from reason ; it doth
not contract the affections, but expandeth them.
In the light of God the memory is made bright and
is not obscured ; in the light of God is learnt what
was not known, and what is known is not unlearnt.
Those supernal spirits, who inhabit heaven from
the beginning, do they because they dwell in
heaven despise the earth ? Do they not rather visit
it and frequent it ? Because they always behold
the face of the Father, doth affection disappear
from their ministry ? Are they not rather minister
ing spirits, sent forth to minister unto those who
are heirs of salvation ? What then ? Shall angels
run to and fro, and succour men, and shall they
who are from ourselves, lose all knowledge of us,
and not know how to have sympathy with us in
the things which they themselves have suffered ?
Shall they be unconscious of our sorrows, who
nevertheless have known them ? Shall they who

222 Reunion in Eternity

have come out of great tribulation have no recogni
tion of those who are still in tribulation ? '

STORY OF HEREBERT AND CUTHBERT, IN

BEDE'S 4 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY,' BOOK IV.

CHAPTER 29

Bishop Cuthbert, who had received a visit from
Herebert at the city of Carlisle, ' among other
things, said, " Brother Herebert, remember at
this Time to ask me all the Questions you would
have resolved, and say all you design ; for we shall
see one another no more in this World. For I am
«ure that the Time of my Dissolution is at hand, and
I shall speedily lay down this Tabernacle." He,
hearing these words, fell down at his Feet, and
shedding Tears, with a Sigh, said, " I beseech you
by our Lord not to forsake me ; but that you
remember your most faithful Companion, and
intreat the supreme Goodness, that as we serv'd
Him together upon Earth, we may depart together
to see His Bliss in Heaven." . . . The Bishop
apply'd himself to Prayer, and having presently
had Intimation in the Spirit, that he had obtain'd
what he begg'd of our Lord, he said, " Rise, Brother,
and do not weep, but rejoice, because the heavenly

Friends 223

Goodness has granted what we desir'd." The
Event prov'd the Truth of this Promise and
Prophecy, for after their parting at that Time,
they no more saw one another corporally ; but
their Souls quitting their Bodies, on the very same
Day, that is, on the 13th Day of the Kalends of
April, they were immediately again united in the
beatifical vision, and translated to the Heavenly
Kingdom by the Ministry of Angels.'

SIR THOMAS MORE

' Mr. Pope taking his leave of him could not
refrain from weeping, which Sir Thomas More
perceiving, comforted him in this wise, " Quiet
yourself, good Mr. Pope, and be not discomforted.
For I trust that we shall once in heaven see each
other full merrily, where we shall be sure to live
and love together in joyful bliss eternally."

QUEEN VICTORIA

Queen Victoria wrote in her private Journal
after meeting Lord Tennyson at Osborne in 1883 :—

' He talked of the many friends he had lost, and
what it would be if he did not feel and know that
there was another world, where there would be no

224 Reunion in Eternity

partings ; and then he spoke with horror of the
unbelievers and philosophers who would make
you believe there was no other world, no Im
mortality, who tried to explain all away in a
miserable manner. We agreed that were such a
thing possible, God, Who is Love, would be far more
cruel than any human being.' l

THOMAS CARLYLE

Carlyle wrote to John Forster (September,
1853) :-

' Alas, the inexorable years, that cut away fron
us, one after another, the true souls whom we
loved, who loved us truly : that is the real bitterness
of life ; against which there is no remedy, and
natural tears must fall ! But we ourselves, my
friend, it is not long we have to stay behind ; we
too shall find a shelter in the Silent Kingdoms :
and much despicability that barked and snarled
incessantly round us here shall there be without
the walls for evermore. " Blessed are the Dead."
I often silently say : " If we had done our work, it
were good for us to be dead too — and safe with all
our loved ones round us, There ! " '

Alfred Lord Tennyson, A Memoir, by his son, vol. ii. p. 457-

Friends 225

NORMAN MACLEOD

We read in the Life of Norman Macleod, that
while the future state, the society, occupations and
joys of the blessed dead had been a favourite theme
with him for many years, during the last days of
his life it seemed to engross his thoughts. No
friend could be with him for many minutes without
his reverting to it.

In his last letter to Principal Shairp, Dr. Macleod
wrote :

4 As I feel time so rapidly passing, I take
your hand, dear old friend, with a firmer grasp.
I have many friends ; few old ones !

' Oh that I loved my oldest and truest, my Father
and Saviour, better ! But should I enter heaven
as a forlorn ship, dismasted, and a mere log — it is
enough — for I will be repaired.'

On his last birthday (June 3, 1872) he wrote in
his Journal : ' I am this day three score years.
The Lord is mysterious in His ways. I bless and
praise Him. I commit myself and my all into His
loving hands, feeling the high improbability of such
a birthday as this being ever repeated. But we
shall be united after the last birthday into heaven.'

p

226 Reunion in Eternity

GOETHE

Stopford Brooke quotes these words of Goethe,
written at the age of seventy -two : —

1 " In our Father's Kingdom there are many
provinces, and as He has given us here so happy
a resting-place, so will He certainly care for us
above. Perhaps we shall be blessed with what
here on earth has been denied us, to know one
another merely by seeing one another, and thence
more fully to love one another." ' l

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote to Lady Byron
in 1857 :—

' I have got past the time when I feel that my
heavenly friends are lost by going there. I fee
them nearer, rather than farther off. So good-bye.,
dear, dear friend, and if you see morning in oui
Father's house before I do, carry my love to those
that wait for me, and if I pass first, you will find
me there, and we shall love each other for ever'

In The Minister's Wooing Harriet Beecher Stowe

1 Life and Letters of Stopford Brooke, vol. ii-ip. 397-

Friends 227

tells of hours of vision wherein the meetings of
eternity are foreshadowed :

' As there was an hour when the fishermen of
Galilee saw their Master transfigured, His raiment
white and glistening, and His face like the light,
so are there hours when our whole mortal life stands
forth in the celestial radiance. From our daily
lot falls off every weed of care — from our heart-
friends every speck and stain of earthly infirmity.
Our horizon widens, and blue and amethyst and
gold touch every object. Absent friends and
friends gone on the last long journey stand once
more together, bright with an immortal glow, and
like the disciples who saw their Master floating in
the clouds above them, we say, " Lord, it is good
to be here ! " How fair the wife, the husband,
the absent mother, the grey-haired father, the
manly son, the bright-eyed daughter ! Seen in
the actual present, all have some fault, some flaw ;
but absent, we see them in their permanent and
better selves. Of our distant home we remember
not one dark day, not one servile care, nothing
but the echo of its holy hymns and the radiance of
its brightest days — of our father, not one hasty
word, but only the fulness of his manly vigour and

228 Reunion in Eternity

noble tenderness — and of our mother, nothing of
mortal weakness, but a glorified form of love — of
our brother, not one teasing, provoking word of
brotherly freedom, but the proud beauty of Ms
noblest hours — of our sister, our child, only what is
fairest and sweetest.

' This is to life the true ideal, the calm glass
wherein looking, we shall see that, whatever de
fects cling to us, they are not, after all, permanent,
and that we are tending to something nobler thin
we yet are : — it is " the earnest of our inheritance
until the redemption of the purchased possession."
In the resurrection we shall see our friends for ever
as we see them in these clairvoyant hours.' l

BISHOP FRANCIS PAGET

Bishop Francis Paget wrote to a bereaved frienc :
' May the God of all comfort help and comfort
you day by day — strengthening you according to
all your need : and ever refreshing in you the great
hope that bears light into our bereavement : the
hope that by His grace we may be so led through

1 The Minister's Wooing, chapter xx.

Friends 229

the things of this world that we come to the glad
ness of a meeting, beyond all pain or grief or
severance.'

When Bishop Paget was dying, those around him
spoke of the dead whom he would see again. ' So
soon ! ' he answered.

DEAN GREGORY

Of the last days of the venerable Dean Gregory,
his friend and colleague, Dr. Scott Holland,
writes :—

' He was absorbed in the interest of the unseen
world. He would not attend to those who talked
to him. " I am very interested," he explained,
while he seemed to be speaking to old friends, and
said " Quite so ! quite so ! " several times.'

DR. FREDERIC GODET

Dr. Frederic Godet wrote, at the age of eighty-
six, to his dying friend, Felix Bovet :—

4 The end of all things will be the eternal Alleluia.
There is the haven where we shall meet again,
" hidden," as Vinet says, " in universal joy."

230 Reunion in Eternity

DR. CHALMERS

One of Dr. Chalmers's most attached friends ^in
the earlier part of his career was Mr. Thomas Smith,
at whose death he wrote : ' I received with much
interest the very touching memorial you have sent
me of one with whom I have held sweet counsel 0:1
earth, and to whose society in heaven I look forward
with such a confidence as, I trust, the Gospel war
rants, and for which the influences of the Gospel
can alone prepare me.'

The memorial was a ring with Mr. Smith's hair
After being laid aside for many years, it was resumec
and worn by Dr. Chalmers for a month during the
year which preceded his own death.

THOMAS ERSKINE

Thomas Erskine of Linlathen wrote at the death
of his friend, Dr. Charles Stuart : —

4 His soul had the mark of God upon it. The
desire of his soul was after God, and his business
was to understand the will and word of God. I
think it was on the Monday after he was taken ill
that he said to me, as I was pressing his hand

Friends 23 1

on taking leave, " / hope to spend an eternity with
you." ' *

DR. MARTINEAU

Dr. Martineau wrote at the age of ninety-three,
to his friend, the Rev. W. Orme White : —

4 The year just passed has bereft me of several
best-beloved friends — revered like F. W. Newman,
as both Teacher and Colleague, or delighted-in like
Richard H. Hutton, as pupil " grown wiser than
his teachers." But the more nearly lifelong these
companionships have been, the less distant is the
morrow of their restoration ; for which surely the
old nonagenarian may wait in quietude of faith.' 2

BISHOP EDWARD KING

In his letters to mourners, the saintly Bishop
Edward King constantly refers to the hope of
reunion. Late in life he wrote to a friend who had
lost her father : —

4 It becomes very hard to keep a brave and cheer
ful interest in life when so many are leaving us.
We must be thankful for the comfort of their love,

1 Letters of Thomas Erskine (1877), vol. i. p. 73.

2 Life and Letters of James Martineau^ voL.ii. p. 244.

232 Reunion in Eternity

and try and look forward and upward to the life
1 above. This life seems to be the place for making
friendships. The next, we hope, will be for en
joying them.' l

R. W. DALE

Dr. Dale preached a beautiful sermon in memory
of his old college friend, the Rev. E. S. Glanville,
of Warwick. He told how the dying minister had
requested his father and sister to sing to him his
favourite hymn, and they sat in the chamber of
death and sang :—

' There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign ;
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.'

* The ethereal purity of his spirit,' said the sur
viving comrade, ' has not been lost to the universe
of souls ; it has only thrown off whatever stained
and obscured it, and been placed beyond the
possibility of pollution. His tenderness and
strength are now conferring on his intercourse with
the spirits of just men made perfect a peculiar and
indestructible charm. . . Only his imperfections have

1 Spiritual Letters.

Friends 233

perished ; he has carried with him into heaven all
that constituted his truest, innermost life. He is
perfectly now all that he was gradually and labori
ously becoming when he was with us.* 1

DR. JOHN KER
Dr. John Ker wrote :

4 1 have the firm belief that the future world is
not cut off from this, but one with it — one through
Him who is Lord both of the living and the dead.
Those who enter into it retain a personal and
conscious existence near to Him, and He will find
means of keeping up their connection, I do well
believe, with that world which they have left. It
is agreeable both to reason and Scripture that this
should be so, and it is very consolatory to us to
think that we and our dear friends shall still have
real union — it is very likely — of knowledge and
communication. In some way He will inform them
of what is transpiring here, or make them see it,
for all the great victories of God's Kingdom on
earth are celebrated with songs of praise in
heaven.' 2

Hope in Death, A Sermon. z Letters.

234 Reunion in Eternity

Dr. Ker writes again :—

' In this world we recognise our friends by the
face and form of the body. This slowly changes,
till at death it utterly disappears in the common
dust. In the world to come we shall recognise each
other by the soul. Even here there are indications
of it. That word, that act, was like himself.'

PHILLIPS BROOKS

Bishop Phillips Brooks wrote at the age of
thirty-seven :—

4 1 wonder what sort of knowledge we shall have
of our friends when we get to the other side, and
what we shall do to keep up our intimacy with one
another. There will be one good thing about it.
I suppose we shall see right through one another
to begin with, and start off on quite a new basis of
mutual understanding. It will be awful at first,
but afterwards it must be quite pleasant to feel that
your friends know the worst of you and not be
continually in danger and in fear that they will
find you out. But then with all eternity ahead
there must be a constantly oppressive fear that
your friends will get tired of you.' 1

1 Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks, by A. V. G. Allen,
vol. ii. p. 86.

Friends 235

Bishop Vail of Kansas wrote in 1885 to his
friend Phillips Brooks : —

4 What times by and by, when in the blessed
home we shall all meet and talk over the past,
when our work here is done, and we come home
from our work there, from time to time, and chat
over the past of our work here, in these abiding
mansions. May God pity our imperfections and
pardon our sins, and admit us to see the King in
His beauty and glory, and evermore to work for
Him.' *

BISHOP G. H. WILKINSON

Bishop G. H. Wilkinson described in a letter to
Bishop Benson the last hours of a lady who had been
his dead wife's closest friend. ' When the spirit
was gone, I tried to realise their meeting — Cara
seeing her. How do spirits see ? What does the
word mean there ? I lost myself thinking, but
instead, there seemed to come a strange sort of
realisation of the two being together, and then I
went back in spirit, to think of my own Cara
separate from all other, ev X^O-TO) 'lycrov (in Christ
Jesus) and allowed, whenever it was good for us, to

1 Life of Bishop Phillips Brooks, vol. ii. p. 565.

236 Reunion in Eternity

be with me in a way different from the way in which
any one but a wife could be.' x

ROBERT Louis STEVENSON

* For thee, for us, the sacred river waits,
For me, the unworthy, thee, the perfect friend ;
There Blame desists, there his unfaltering dogs
He from the chase recalls, and homeward rides ;
Yet Praise and Love pass over and go in.
So when, beside that margin, I discard
My more than mortal weakness, and with thee
Through that still land unfearing I advance ;
If then at all we keep the touch of joy
Thou shalt rejoice to find me altered — I,
O Felix, to behold thee still unchanged.' 2

WORDSWORTH

' O dearer far than light and life are dear,

Full oft our human foresight I deplore ;
Trembling, through my unworthiness, with fear
That friends, by death disjoined, may meet no
more 1

Misgivings, hard to vanquish or control,

Mix with the day, and cross the hour of rest ;

While all the future, for thy purer soul,
With " sober certainties " of love is blest.'

1 Life of Bishop Wilkinson, vol. ii. p. 32.

2 Robert Louis Stevenson's Songs of Travel.

Friends 237

E. B. BROWNING
Futurity

1 And, O beloved voices, upon which
Ours passionately call because erelong
Ye brake off in the middle of that song
We sang together softly, to enrich
The poor world with the sense of love, and witch
The heart out of things evil — I am strong,
Knowing ye are not lost for aye among
The hills, with last year's thrush. God keeps a niche
In Heaven to hold our idols ; and albeit
He brake them to our faces and denied
That our close kisses should impair their white,
I know we shall behold them raised, complete,
The dust swept from their beauty — glorified
New Memories singing in the great God-light.'

DORA GREEN WELL
(From Carmina Crucis)

4 At noon-tide came a voice " Thou must away ;
Hast thou some look to give, some word to say,
Or hear, of fond farewell ? " I answered, " Nay."

My soul hath said its farewell long ago,

How light, when Summer comes, the loosened snow

Slides from the hills ! yet tell me, where I go,

Doth any wait for me ? Then like the clear
Full drops of summer rain that seem to cheer
The skies they fall from, soft within mine ear,

238 Reunion in Eternity

And slow, as if to render through that sweet
Delay a blest assurance more complete,
" Yea," only " yea " was whisper'd me, and then
A silence that was unto it, Amen.'

DR. LIVINGSTONE

Livingstone l to his friend Sir Roderick Murchi-
son : —

4 May blessings be on you and yours, and if we
never meet again on earth, may we through
infinite mercy meet in heaven ! '

IZAAK WALTON
thus concludes his life of Dr. John Donne : —

' He was earnest and unwearied in the search of
knowledge, with which his vigorous soul is now
satisfied, and employed in a continual praise of
that God that first breathed it into his active
body ; that body, which once was a Temple of
the Holy Ghost, and is now become a small
quantity of Christian dust : but I shall see it
re -animated.'

Blaikie's Person al Life of Livingstone, chapter xi.

Friends 239

LONGFELLOW
In his poem ' Auf Wiedersehen '

4 Faith overleaps the confines of our reason,
And if by faith, as in old times was said,
Women received their dead
Raised up to life, then only for a season
Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain
Until we meet again ! '

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON

' Some day or other I shall surely come

Where true hearts wait for me :
Then let me learn the language of that home

While here on earth I be,
Lest my poor lips for want of words be dumb
In that high company.'

PERE GRATRY

Life of Henri Perreyve (English trans., p. 206)
Gratry writes, appealing to the saints in heaven: —
4 Comfort us in that death hour, which ever
draws nearer, if it may be, by some conscious
indication of the friendly band of living and
loving souls which await each one of us with a
joyous welcome on the other side of Jordan.'

MISCELLANEOUS TESTIMONIES FROM
HISTORY AND LITERATURE

PLUTARCH

PLUTARCH'S. Essay on ' Pleasure not attainable,
according to the rules of Epicurus ' criticises
(paragraph 28) the Epicureans for robbing men of
the joy and pleasure of expecting reunion aftei
death. He says : ' If, as Epicurus admits, " the
recollection of a dead friend is utterly sweet," we
can well understand what a joy men deprive them
selves of, if they imagine they are only to cherish
and haunt the wraiths and phantoms of their dead
companions, and never again to be with their very
selves, never to see their own fathers and mothers
and good wives, never expecting that affectionate
intercourse of spirits which is anticipated by all
who share the views of Pythagoras, Plato, and
Homer.'

THE DELPHIC ORACLE

Porphyry has preserved for us a remarkable
utterance of the Pythian priestess at Delphi, given

240

Miscellaneous Testimonies 241

in answer to the inquiry : ' Where is now the soul
of Plotinus ? ' F. W. H. Myers, in his essay on
Greek Oracles, says that this poem, whatever its
source, stands out to us as one of the most earnest
utterances of antiquity. ' Nowhere, indeed, is the
contest more apparent between the intensity of
the emotions which are struggling for utterance
and the narrow limits of human speech, which was
composed to deal with the things that are known
and visible, and not with those that are incon
ceivable and unseen.'

The translation by Myers includes these
lines :—

4 Pure spirit — once a man — pure spirits now
Greet thee rejoicing, and of these art thou ;

Now from about thee, in thy new home above,
Has perished all but life, and all but love, —
And on all lives and on all loves outpoured
Free grace and full, a Spirit from the Lord,
High in that heaven whose windless vaults enfold
Just men made perfect, and an age all gold.
Thine own Pythagoras is with thee there
And sacred Plato in that sacred air,
And whoso followed, and all high hearts that knew
In death's despite what deathless Love can do.
To God's right hand they have scaled the starry way-
Pure spirits these, thy spirit pure as they.

242 Reunion in Eternity

Ah, saint ! how many and many an anguish past,
To how fair haven art thou come at last !
On thy meek head what Powers their blessing pour
Filled full with life, and rich for evermore ! ' 1

CYPRIAN

The earliest Father of the Church who gav>
voice to this hope in any warmth of detail was
Cyprian. We give a few sentences from his treatise
De Mortalitate (written 253 A.D.) :—

' What person, hurrying on a voyage to his own
people, would not eagerly desire a favourable wind,
that he might speedily be able to embrace his
dear ones ? We reckon Paradise our home-land.
Already we begin to have the patriarchs as our
sires. What haste and speed do we not make, that
we may behold our home-land and hail our sires ?
A great host of dear ones is waiting for us, parents,
brothers, sons ; a vast crowd longs for us, already
sure of their own immortality, but still anxious
about our salvation. What a joy for them and
for us, that we come to see them and embrace them !
What delights are in the heavenly kingdom there,
with not a fear of death and with an eternity of

1 F. W. H. Myers, Essays Classical, pp, 99, 100.

Miscellaneous Testimonies 243

life ! What supreme, what lasting felicity ! There
is the noble band of the apostles, the host of rejoic
ing prophets, the innumerable company of martyrs,
crowned for their victory in the strife and suffering ;
there are the triumphant virgins, who overcame
the desire of the flesh and body by the strength
of their continence ; there the merciful are rewarded
who did work of righteousness by succouring and
benefiting the poor, who kept the Lord's precepts
and transferred their earthly patrimony to^the
heavenly treasury. Thither, O beloved brethren,
let us hasten with eager desire, that we may long
to be with them soon, that we may soon come to
Christ.'

JEROME

In 399 A.D. Jerome writes (Ch. Ixxv.) to a Spanish
lady, Theodora, to comfort her after the death of
her husband Lucinius :—

4 When we have to face the hard and cruel neces
sity of death, what upholds us is the consoling
thought that we shall soon see again those whose
absence we are now lamenting. Lucinius, now
a victor and free from care, looks down on you
from on high, supports you in your struggle, nay
more, is preparing for you a place near himself;

244 Reunion in Eternity

for his love and affection are still the same towards
you.' Jerome then explains that when Jesus said,
4 They shall be like the angels in heaven ' (Matt,
xxii. 30), He did not mean that human beings would
lose their identity. ' They shall be like the angels ;
. that is, they will not cease to be human. Th(;
Apostle Paul will still be Paul, Mary will still be

Mary.'

MEDIAEVAL

Cynewulf, the Anglo-Saxon author (end oi'
eighth century), in the almost rapturous Crisi
(1650 f.) thus describes heaven :—

4 There is the song of angels, the beatitude of
the Church, . . . the love of loved ones, amity
between friends hereafter without feud, peace
without any discussion among the blessed in
heaven.'

The Sieur de Joinville, in his Life of King Louis
IX., gives a record of the last instructions of the
dying monarch to his son and heir. After instruc
tions about ruling justly, the King concludes :—

' Finally, my very dear son, I give thee all the
blessings that a good father can give to his son.
And may the Trinity and all the saints keep and
defend thee from all evils : and God give thee grace

Miscellaneous Testimonies 245

to do His will always, so that He be honoured in
thee, and that thou and I may both, after this
mortal life is ended, be with Him together and
praise Him everlastingly. Amen.'

THE REFORMATION AGE

Bishop Coverdale's translation l of the treatise on
Death by Otho Vierdmullerus, chapter xxxiii., ' The
Faithful shall know one another in Heaven ' :—

4 Then also shall the blessed know one another
again, having joy together, and rejoicing in the
obtained health. For if there should be no know
ledge, to what end then should the bodies rise
again ; or what fruit and profit should the resur
rection have ; or how might the sentence of Daniel
the prophet be verified, when he saith, " They that
have instructed and taught others godliness, shall
shine, and be as light as the stars in the
firmament " ? '

' When we talk of death and of the state and
ease of the life to come, we say, though now we
must depart asunder, yet shall we see one another
again in the eternal country.'

1 Parker Society's edition (1846).

246 Reunion in Eternity

4 Socrates also, the right famous and most
excellent among all the wise men of the heathen,
marked such a like thing, and saw it as in a dream,
when, as Cicero witnesseth of him, he was of death
condemned of the judges or council, and now
should drink the poison. For he said : " O, how
much better and more blessed it is to go unto them,
that well and uprightly lived here in time, than to
remain here in this life upon earth 1 O, how dear
and worthy a thing it is, that I may talk with
Orpheus, Ulysses, Homerus, Hesiodus, with those
excellent men ! Verily, I would not only die once,
but many and sundry times also, if it were possible,
to obtain the same," etc.'

Dr. Hay Fleming sends us these words of John
Knox : —

4 Rejois, ye faithfull, for in joy sail we meet whair
death may not dissever us.' l

A BRIEF CATENA FROM THE ELIZABETHAN
DRAMATISTS

Massinger's play, The Renegado

(Act v. Scene 3.)
The Venetian Christian, Vitelli, just before his

1 Lamp's Knox, iii. 215.

Miscellaneous Testimonies 247

execution, baptizes a Moslem lady at Tunis, and
then says :—

4 We part now, blest one,
To meet hereafter in a kingdom where
Hell's malice shall not reach us.'

Webster's Duchess of Malfl
(Act in. Scene 5.)

The Duchess's farewell to her steward, Antonio,
at the shrine of Loretto :—

' In the eternal church, sir, I do hope we shall
not part thus.'

Massinger's The Virgin Martyr
(Act n. Scene 1.)

Angelo, the good spirit, serving Dorothea in the
guise of a page, tells her :—

1 My father is in heaven : and, pretty mistress,
If your illustrious hour-glass spend his sand
No worse than yet it does, upon my life,
You and I both shall meet my father there,
And he shall bid you welcome.'

248 Reunion in Eternity

Beaumont and Fletcher's Bonduca
(Act v. Scene 5.)

Hengo, the British boy, dying of wounds inflicted
by the Romans, cries to his uncle, Caratach, the
British commander :

' Good noble uncle, weep not.'

Car. Oh, my chicken. My dear boy, what shall 1

lose?
Hengo. Why, a child, that must have died however ;

had this scaped me, fever or famine — I was

born to die, sir.

Car. But thou unblown, my boy ?
Hengo. I go the straighter my journey to the gods.

Sure, I shall know you when you come, uncle.
Car. Yes, boy.
Hengo. And I hope we shall enjoy together that great

blessedness you told me of.
Car. Most certain, boy. . . . Oh fair flower ; how

lovely yet thy ruins show, how sweetly

even death embraces thee ! the peace of

heaven, the fellowship of all great souls, be

with thee.

ONE OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS

The following lines occur in the 'Lamentation
for the death of that precious and worthy minister
of Jesus Christ, Mr. Thomas Hooker, who died
July 7, 1647, as the sun was setting. The same

Miscellaneous Testimonies 249

hour of the day died blessed Calvin, that glorious
light ' :-

4 Him didst thou serve while life and breath did last,
With Him now blest, while life and breath is past.
Sense of our loss would call thee back again.
But out of love, we bid thee there remain,
Till we yet left behind our course fulfil,
To meet thee on the top of Zion's hil] ;
When thou and we shall both rejoice together,
So fast united as no death shall sever ;
Both to sing praises to our heavenly King,
Who hath us saved from death's poisonous sting,
And will restore our bodies from the grave,
Which them to dust of death consumed have ;
Making them shine like brightness of the sun
With glory, ne'er to end when once begun.
Let heaven and earth, angels and men Him praise,
Sounding His glory past all length of days.'

The poem from which these closing lines are
taken is included in ' Everyman ' edition of The
Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers, to which Mr.
John Masefield has written an introduction.

GENERAL LITERATURE
WILLIAM COWPER

From Cowper's letter to Lady Hesketh on the
death of his uncle, written June 15, 1788.

' He made impression not soon to be effaced, and

250 Reunion in Eternity

was in figure, in temper, in manner and in numerous;
other respects such as I shall never behold again.
I often think what a joyful interview there has been
between him and some of his contemporaries who
went before him. The truth of the matter is, my
dear, that they are the happy ones, and that we
shall never be such ourselves till we have joined
the party. Can there be anything so worthy of our
warmest wishes as to enter on an eternal, un
changeable state, in blessed fellowship and com
munion with those whose society we valued most,
and for the best reasons, while they continued with
us ? A few steps more through a vain, foolish
world, and this happiness will be yours.'

MAZZINI

The following letter by Mazzini was published
for the first time in the Glasgow Herald of April
17, 1918. It was addressed to the late Mr. John
M'Adam, Glasgow :—

' MY DEAR SIR, — I feel very grateful to you for
your having written about your domestic sorrows
to me ; I take it as the highest proof of friendly
feelings, not only of political sympathies. I feel
your loss deeply. I have lost one by one, and,

Miscellaneous Testimonies 251

what is worse from afar, all those I love in Italy, a
sister excepted ; and I know the deep, irreparable,
everlasting grief such losses impart. Family
affections, when such do exist, are, I fear, the only
constant ones. I have no word of comfort to give
you, except the one which your heart has already
whispered : Immortality. It is the one which
has made me survive those losses and hardened me
to my task. Every death of a loved one has been
to me a new duty to stand up and not desert the
way which made me loved. I believe in Im
mortality as I believe in Life ; Life cannot die ;
it would be God dying. I do believe in conscious
Immortality ; without a consciousness of identity
it would be a lie ; and the conscience of Humanity
does not utter lies. I believe in a progressive life
for the individual, as I believe in a progressive
life for collective mankind : Life is one, there is only
one law for it, under whatever aspects it manifests
itself. I believe in the progressive development of
our affections, when we live and die in them : they
are the best part of our life ; and they are the seed,
the initiation of the flower ; the flower unfolds itself
elsewhere, just as the flower, born within earth,
expands in another element, the air. I believe in

252 Reunion in Eternity

the meeting of those who love ; without that,
paired affection, a thing of God, would be nothing
but a bitter irony. I believe that meeting to be a
reward, the highest perhaps we can have, whilst
finite and progressing ; that reward being granted
first to constancy in love, secondly as constancy in
the task we had in hand at the moment in which the
loved one has left us for a while. There is a whole
belief and a whole guidance in this ; and I live and
walk, sad but composed and firm, as if I was
surrounded by the dead I love, and as if any change
in me, any withering, barren, egotistical grief,
would not only grieve them but prolong the separa
tion. Every death has left her stamp on my soul ;
and taken away for ever a smile from my face,
because I am a man, whatever I believe in ; and
we feel heavily even a temporary separation from
those we love ; but it has strengthened me in the
fulfilment of what I believe to be my duties and has
kept far the cold, dry, atheistical sorrow. Life is
nothing but a mission, therefore a sorrow, but
not without a consolation ; immortality of love.
These feelings are yours, I am sure, therefore I have
no other words to utter to you ; and I must limit
myself to feel with you till you go, and stretch to you

Miscellaneous Testimonies 253

from here a sympathising, friendly hand ; to you
and to Mrs. M'Adam.

' About our affairs I shall write to you very soon ;
I have written Genoa ; but I do not think we can
get much. — Ever yours affectionately,

'JOSEPH MAZZINI.'
Oct. 17, 1857.

W. RATHBONE GREG

4 Millions in all times have walked courageously
into the Great Darkness, satisfied that they were
going to rejoin the company of those whose places
had been long " left void in their earthly homes,"
and, after long yearnings, to satisfy again, " the
mighty hunger of the heart " in the fulness of
eternal joy ; — whatever human affections have been
pure, fervent, self-sacrificing, devoted and enduring,
look forward to Heaven for their renewal, their
resting-place, and their full fruition. If this ex
pectation be delusive, what instinct of the heart
can henceforth be trusted ? '

MAX MULLER

Max Miiller wrote :—

' I know we shall meet again, for God does not

254 Reunion in Eternity

destroy what He has made, nor do souls meet by
accident. This life is full of riddles, but divine
riddles have a divine answer.'

And again : ' Our broken hearts are the truest
earnest of everlasting life.'

4 1 quite understand,' he said, ' what you mean
by the sweetness of grief ; it is but another name for
that love which lasts for ever.'

W. E. GLADSTONE

' I would from the bottom of my heart,' wrote
Mr. Gladstone, ' that whenever the hour of bereave
ment shall befall you or those whom you love, you
and they may enjoy the immeasurable consolation
of believing, with all the mind and all the heart,
that the beloved one is gone into eternal rest, and
that those who remain behind may, through the
same mighty deliverer, hope at their appointed
time to rejoin him.'

RICHARD BAXTER

* Lord, it belongs not to my care

Whether I die or live ;
To love and serve Thee is my share,
And this Thy grace must give.

Miscellaneous Testimonies 255

If life be long, I will be glad,

That I may still obey ;
If short, yet why should I be sad

To soar to endless day ?

Christ leads me through no darker rooms

Than He went through before ;
He that unto God's kingdom comes

Must enter by this door.

Come, Lord, when grace hath made me meet

Thy blessed face to see ;
For, if Thy work on earth be sweet

What will Thy glory be ?

Then shall I end my sad complaints

And weary, sinful days,
And join with the triumphant saints

Who sing Jehovah's praise.

My knowledge of that life is i>mall,

The eye of faith is dim ;
But 'tis enough that Christ knows all

And I shall be with Him.'

A MEETING

I can recall so well how she would look —
How at the very murmur of her dress
On entering the door, the whole room took
An air of gentleness.

256 Reunion in Eternity

That was so long ago, and yet his eyes

Had always, afterwards, the look that waits
And yearns, and waits again, nor can disguise
Something it contemplates.

May we imagine it ? the sob, the tears,

The long, sweet, shuddering breath; then, on her

breast,

The great, full, flooding sense of endless years
Of heaven, and her, and rest.'

ANON.

EDWIN MARKHAM
The April Hour

' For over the world a dim hope hovers,

The hope at the heart of all our songs —
That the banded stars are in league with lovers,
And fight against their wrongs.

There are more lives yet, there are more worlds

waiting,

For the way climbs up to the eldest sun,
Where the white ones go to their mystic mating,
And the Holy Will is done.

I will find you there where our low life heightens —

Where the door of the Wonder again unbars,
Where the old love lures and the old fire whitens,
In the stars behind the stars.

Miscellaneous Testimonies 257

Ah, strangely then will the heart be shaken,
For something starry will touch the hour ;
And the mystic wind of the worlds will waken,
Stirring the soul's tall flower.

As we go star-stilled in the mystic garden,

All the prose of this life run there to rhyme,
How eagerly will the poor heart pardon
All of these hurts of Time !

For 'twill all come back — the wasted splendour,
The heart's lost youth like a breaking flower,
The dauntless dare, and the wistful, tender
Touch of the April hour.'

DINAH M. CRAIK

All Saints' Day
(At New College Chapel, Oxford)

' I shall find them again, I shall find them again,

Though I cannot tell when or where ;
My earthly own, gone to worlds unknown,
But never beyond Thy care."

I shall find them again, I shall find them again,

By the soul that within me dwells,
And leaps unto Thee with rapture free,

As the jubilant anthem swells.

" / heard a voice saying." What it says,

I hear. So perchance do they,
As I stand between my living, I ween,

And my dead, on All Saints' Day.

258 Reunion in Eternity

And I see all clear — new heavens, new earth,

New bodies, redeemed from pain :
New souls — Ah ! not so : with the soul that I know

Let me find, let me find them again !

Let me walk with them under any sky,

Beside any land or sea,
In what shape or make Thou will'st us to take,

If like unto, near to, Thee.

Let me wander wherever Thou bidd'st me go,

Rest, labour, or even remain,
Lulled in long still sleep in the earth or the deep,

If I wake to find them again.

Only at times does the awful mist

Lift off, and we seem to see
For a moment's space the far dwelling-place

Of these, our beloved, and Thee.

Only at times through our soul's shut doors

Come visits divine as brief,
And we cease to grieve, crying, " Lord, I believe ;

Help Thou mine unbelief."

Linger a little, invisible host

Of the sainted dead who stand
Perhaps not far off, though men may scoff —

Touch me with unfelt hand.

But my own, my own, ye are holding me fast,

With the human clasp that I knew ;
Through the chorus clear your voices I hear,

And I am singing with you.

Miscellaneous Testimonies 259

Ah, they melt away and the music dies,
Back comes the world's work — hard, plain ;

Yet God lifted in grace the veil from His face,
And it smiled, " Thou shalt find them again." '

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

When youthful faith hath fled,
Of loving take thy leave ;

Be constant to the dead —
The dead cannot deceive.

Sweet modest flowers of spring,
How fleet your balmy day !

And man's brief life can bring
No secondary May :

No earthly burst again
Of gladness out of gloom,

Fond hope and vision vain,
Ungrateful to the tomb.

But 'tis an old belief

That on some solemn shore

Beyond the sphere of grief

Dear friends shall meet once more

Beyond the sphere of Time
And Sin and Fate's control,

Serene in endless prime
Of body and of soul.

260 Reunion in Eternity

That creed I fain would keep,
Thai hope I '11 not forego—

Eternal be the sleep
Unless to waken so ! '

HENRY VAUGHAN

They are all gone into the world of light !

And I alone sit ling' ring here ;
Their very memory is fair and bright

And my sad thoughts doth clear.

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast,

Like stars upon some gloomy grove,
Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest
After the sun's remove.

I see them walking in an air of glory

Whose light doth trample on my days :
My days, which are at best but dull and hoary,
Mere glimm'ring and decays.

O holy Hope ! and high Humility,

High as the Heavens above !

These are your walks, and you have show'd them me,
To kindle my cold love.

Dear, beauteous Death ! the jewel of the Just,

Shining nowhere, but in the dark ;
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,
Could man outlook that mark !

Miscellaneous Testimonies 261

He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know,

At first sight, if the bird be flown ;
But what fair well or grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown.

And yet as Angels in some brighter dreams

Call to the soul, when man doth sleep ;
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes
And into glory peep.

If a star were confined into a tomb,

Her captive flames must needs burn there ;
But when the hand that lock'd her up gives room,
She '11 shine through all the sphere.

O Father of eternal life, and all

Created glories under Thee !
Resume Thy Spirit from the world of thrall
Into true liberty.

Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill

My perspective still as they pass :
Or else remove me hence unto that hill
Where I shall need no glass.'

APPENDIX

THE OLD TESTAMENT

BY PROFESSOR ARTHUR S. PEAKE, D.D.

THE Hebrews believed in a kind of survival after
death. Life in its full sense consisted in the union
on this upper earth of the body and soul, the
material and relatively immaterial constituents of
personality. Death tore these asunder. Yet not
completely so. The body is not, apparently,
entirely without sensation ; the pain of decom
position is felt, or of mutilation after death, the
bones retain some of the old vitality and power.
The shade has only an attenuated existence, a
thin trickle of what was once the full flood of con
sciousness. Though separated from the body, it
feels what the body suffers, since both are parts of
the same personality.

Originally it seems to have been thought that
the shade dwelt in or near its body which rested
in the tomb. It had a certain freedom of move
ment, and in virtue of its unearthly knowledge could
reveal secrets through the necromancer. Very

266 Reunion in Eternity

effective use is made of this as late as Jeremiah,
in his wonderful passage describing Rachel at
her tomb wailing for the children who have gone
into exile. But it is not clear how far one might
press this as representing Jeremiah's own view
It is probable that he held the current view of
Sheol, and that this passage is to be taken as the
poetical use of an older idea.

The conception of Sheol is a development from
the grave. Here the shades of all men are gathered
together. There is no distinction of the good and
evil. Earlier conditions are to some extent repro
duced, kings sit on thrones, the shade appears in
the garb worn at death, or bearing the wounds
inflicted upon him. But the old social tyrannies
have ceased ; the slave is free from his master. It
is a life of untroubled peace, of intolerable tedium,
pale, negative, colourless, but also free almost
entirely from the pain and anxiety of life.

There is reunion in Sheol. After death a man is
gathered to his kinsfolk. To return to the warm
upper life of earth is impossible. Job again and
again contemplates it as a possibility, but always
sets the thought of it aside, as something out of
the question. But at death there is reunion with

Appendix 267

those who have gone before. David cannot bring
back the dearly-loved child ; but he comforts
himself with the thought ' I shall go to him, but
he shall not return to me.' The old life in families,
clans, tribes, nations is reproduced in Sheol. But
this is contingent on burial in the family grave, to
which the greatest importance was attached. If a
man is buried elsewhere, or is not buried at all,
he goes down, according to the usual view, to Sheol,
but separation from the family grave precludes
reunion with the family. Thus in Isaiah xiv., the
king of Babylon, because he is not joined with his
fathers in burial, descends, it is true, to Sheol, and
creates a sensation by his arrival ; but he is doomed
to lie on the soil of the under -world, a soil infested
with worms, in Shed's furthest recesses, instead of
sitting on a throne.

The outlook for the future was gloomy at the
best. Cut off from the rich and varied interests
of the upper-world, with all its substantial satis
factions, banished for ever from the only sphere in
which communion with God was possible, the shade
dragged out its weary, monotonous, interminable
existence, in dreariness and apathy. But if it had
no vivid joys, it was free from anything but the

268 Reunion in Eternity

dullest pains ; and it had such consolation as could
be given by the reunion with the family and the
kin, which was secured by reunion of their bodies
in the family grave.

From this hopeless outlook religion moved in the
later pre-Christian centuries hi two directions
The thought which Job again and again contem
plated with longing, but always to set it firmly
aside in the end, became a hope and then a belief.
This was, that soul and body might return from
Sheol and the grave, be reunited, and resume their
old life on earth. This was the hope of a resurrec
tion, first limited to righteous Israelites, especially
martyrs, then extended as a penalty to some of the
wicked, especially apostates. The other line of
advance had its root in religious experience. The
communion which the saint enjoyed with God was
so deep, so intimate, so precious, that it rose tri
umphant over death. Death could not dissolve
a fellowship so close and so perfect. Hence grew
the belief in the immortality of the soul, the blessed
continuance of life after death in communion with
God.

THE CLASSICAL WORLD
BY T. E. PAGE, D.C.L.

DEAR SIR ROBERTSON NICOLL, — The classical
world had such hazy conceptions of a future life
that, as far as I know, the more specialised idea of
reunion hardly emerges at all.

To Homer the dead are ' feeble folk ' (vetcvcw
d/jLevrjva icdpyva) who need to 4 drink blood '
before they can feel lively enough to talk, and I have
looked through the ' Sepulchral Epigrams ' in the
Greek Anthology without finding one, even among
the less artificial and more homely, which suggests
the idea of reunion. Of course for poetical purposes
the dead are often represented as awaiting their
kin, and when a warrior slays another he may bid
him scornfully take some message to his dead sire
or the like, and in Soph. Antigone, Antigone who
is to die because she insisted on burying her dead
brother, as she is led away apostrophises the tomb,
saying (1. 897) :—

irarpij Trpocr^iAr)? 8t croi,
crot, Kacriyy^TOV Kapa.

269

270 Reunion in Eternity

She has good hopes that she ' will come dear ' to
her kinsfolk, and, though this is not very definite,
at any rate she is willing to die (and does die) rather
than offend or injure her brother's ghost.

In Plato's Phaedo, where you might expect to find
something on the subject, the ' great hope ' spoken
of is only that the soul, now wholly freed from the
body, shall find that of which it was enamoured in
life, to wit ' wisdom,' and dwell ' with the gods,'
or possibly in the company of others who ' have
truly studied philosophy,' though he does refer
(Phaedo, 68A) to the fact that ' many on the death
of wives and sons, etc., voluntarily willed to pass into
Hades, being led by the hope that there they will
see and dwell with those they longed for.'

In the Apology Socrates says that in Hades he
will find c just judges,' such as Minos and Rhada-
manthus, and such ' heroes ' (fifiLOeoi.) as ' showed
themselves just,' and suggests how delightful it will
be to meet with 6 Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod
and Homer.' But nowhere does he suggest to his
wife or sons, or even to his disciples, that they may
meet again, and generally where any meeting after
death is referred to, it is a meeting with men of
note and eminence. And this holds in the few

Appendix 271

passages in Latin writers where the subject is
discussed.

In the De Senectute, xxii. 79, 80, Cicero speaks of
the ' glorious day ' when, leaving the rabble and
riff-raff of Rome, he shall join the divinum animorum
concilium coetumque, and meet with the Scipios and
great men of Rome ; but I doubt whether this is
more than a rhetorical suggestion that he claims to
be one of them (cf. the story of Beaconsfield and
the House of Lords) ; and in the letter (Ad. Fam.,
bk. iv.) which S. Sulpicius addressed to him on the
death of his daughter Tullia, there is not a hint of
any reunion.

In Seneca too, who is endlessly talking of life
and death, even in the long Consolatio ad Marciam,
after masses of the usual Stoic commonplaces, I
find only this (c. xxv. Lodge's translation) : —

' He hath been carried to far higher places,
where he converseth with the happier soules, and
hath been entertained by that holy company of
Scipioses, Catoes, and others. . . . There, Martia,
thy father, embraceth his nephew (although that
there all be parents), joyful to see him enlightened
with a great brightnesse, and teacheth him the
courses of the neighbouring starres, etc., etc.'

272 Reunion in Eternity

And this seems to me purely a bit of rhetoric.

Even Virgil, in the Sixth ^Eneid, seems rather to
use the under -world as a convenient mise-en-sc&ne
(cf. the use made of Sheol by Isaiah to bring out
his scorn for the king of Babylon) than from any
real belief, and the picture of Dido fleeing front
^Eneas into a grove :—

Conjux ubi pristinus illi
respondet curis aequatque Sychaeus amorem,

is rather a piece of artistry than anything else.

Generally speaking, I think this fragment from a
comic poet illustrates the feeling of antiquity on
the matter :—

TCUS a..rcai(riv o
€
iSelv '

' If in truth the dead had perception, as some say,
I would have hung myself so that I might see
Euripides.'

Yours very sincerely,

T. E. PAGE.

THE CHURCH OF ROME
BY THE REV. CANON WILLIAM BARRY, D.D.

DEAR SIR WILLIAM NICOLL, — Your question
illustrates a certain deep difference between the
English way, as I will call it, and the Catholic, of
being concerned about the life to come. Let me
put my meaning sharply.

The Sadducees asked mockingly, ' In the Resur
rection whose wife shall she be ? ' Our Lord replied,
' Ye do err ... for in the Resurrection they neither
marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the
Angels of God in Heaven.'

These words end once for all the tribal idea,
that of the family or the clan, projected into the
eternal order. It cannot be descried sub specie
ceternitatis. Man's relation to God his Maker and
Redeemer is of the alone to the Alone. Nations
die, and do not rise again. The family is a thing
of flesh and blood, bounded in time, and not im
plying consanguinity of the spirit. Hence Christ
summons His followers to leave their kindred in

s

274 Reunion in Eternity

language most emphatic and peremptory, ' Unless
a man renounce ... he cannot be my disciple.'

The City of God is not a City of the Tribes, but
the City of Friends. It looks for citizens ' without
father, without mother,' born of the Spirit. ' On<>
is your Father, in Heaven.'

Thus the Catholic Church holds, and on such s
belief she has ever acted. Her doctrine touching
Eternity runs, ' Blessed are the dead that die hi
the Lord.' She calls them Saints in Heaven, the
Holy Souls in Purgatory. They are sure of God's
sight, the Beatific Vision ; they shall know even
as they are known. The Communion of Saints is
begun here, made perfect there. We invoke the
Saints ; we pray for the Holy Souls.

To ask then, ' Shall we be reunited in Eternity ? '
is all one with asking, c Shall we be saved or lost ? '

But such a supernatural view seems hard to
Englishmen, who by temperament are in no small
measure Sadducee, while, if believing, they still
carry their family arrangements into a world
which transcends all the lines and qualities of mere
human nature. Sermons in English pulpits at
funeral services almost always dwell on ' reunion ' ;
' we shall meet again ' ; so do hymns like, ' O that

Appendix 275

will be joyful, when we meet to part no more,'
and the S. Army chant, ' Shall we gather by the
river ? ' Not such is the tone of the Catholic
Requiem. In the Mass we do indeed recite St.
Paul, 1 Thess. iv. 18, but the comfort held out is
' to be for ever with the Lord.'

As our theologians handle the matter, it resolves
itself into questions concerning angelic knowledge,
the privileges and powers of the soul which being
admitted to Purgatory or to Heaven has come to
a higher stage of supernatural existence. These
problems are treated in the Summa of St. Thomas
Aquinas. It is generally held that the Saints
enjoying the Beatific Vision see human events and
persons in that light ; and of course they know one
another. On the knowledge possessed by the
Holy Souls which are undergoing purification there
is no general doctrine. The Church has never
defined these points. (You might glance at ' The
Dream of Gerontius.')

Pope Leo xin. condemned certain ' propositions '
of Antonio Rosmini, 38, 39, 40, which seemed to
limit the Beatific Vision of the Saints to what they
could know of God through His created effects
(opera ad extra) or in His creatures. The Church

276 Reunion in Eternity

teaches that they know God Himself directly,
by intuition, and all else in the ' light of glory,'
thus given them. They need no creature to be
perfectly happy ; but they know their companions
in bliss.

Ever yours sincerely,

WILLIAM BARRY.

THE MYSTICS

BY ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE

MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM, — You have set me the
hardest thing which has come my way recently.
There is so little in the mystics on Reunion in
Eternity, that I was prompted to answer your
question by denying that there was anything at
all ; but I felt that I must look about me, and
hence the chief reason of my long delay in writing.
I have been searching this evening in the old quarto
containing the Surius translation of Ruysbroeck
into Latin. Ruysbroeck says that the saints and
all believers are one in Christ Jesus and are members
one of another. This is in De Fide et Judicio
Tractatulus ; but it does not help you. He says
also that we shall see with our intellectual eyes
the glory in common of God, of angels and of saints.
This is in De Septem Amoris Gradibus Libelltis ;
but again it is not much to your purpose. How
ever, in De Vera Contemplatione Opus, cap. 26,
he says that by the elevation of our whole being,

S2

278 Reunion in Eternity

all our forces and all our faculties, in love to God
we reach into the unity-state of all loving spirits
in the source of Divine Grace. God dwells in that
unity and dispenses to each loving spirit according
to the dignity of each. It must be said that
Ruysbroeck is speaking of a state which can be
attained here and now, but it is obviously a foretaste
of the bliss in union hereafter. There is also the
Hermit of Hampole, our well -beloved Richard
Rolle, who has one sentence, and it is pregnant.
Speaking of love in its unitive and transforming
strength, he says that it makes lovers one in deed
and will, adding this, as by a sudden inspiration :
' And Christ and every holy soul it makes one.'

I have gone through other records, as, for example,
the Directorium Mysticum of Antonio a Spiritu
Sancto, which quotes many authorities on all
departments of the mystical experience, but I
have found nothing.

You must not be surprised at the silence of the
mystics : they were concerned only with the union
of the soul and God, and one of the limitations in
their quest was that they tended to regard the love
of creatures as a hindrance, except in so far as it
belonged to the detached counsels of charity.

Appendix 279

If it be worth while to offer you as a mystic my
own view on the subject, I would put it roughly,
but perhaps clearly, in the following way.

What is Divine Union ? It is realisation in God.
What is that which realises ? It is our own self.
What is the first consequence of attaining the state
of union ? A change in the centre of our being,
for the self is in God, and henceforth and for ever is
no longer in its own centre. What is the next
consequence ? The attainment of all in God that
belongs to Him. What does this signify ? It
signifies, among other things, the communion of
saints in the eternal. The doctrine is : They in
Him and He in us. This is the Reunion in Eternity,
in the state of redemption, with those whom we
have loved on earth. But what of those who,
according to our limited human discernment, are
not in this state ? I know only that we have the
promise of that time — which indeed is outside all
time — when God shall be all in all. That is when
Christ gives up the Kingdom to the Father.

Excellent friend, it is very beautiful in our all-
imperfect following of the mystic path to know
that we are not striving alone to go up into the
Sanctuary of the Union ; that we are one and

280 Reunion in Eternity

another in a great procession, ' of all nations, and
kindreds, and people, and tongues,' of to-day and
of the immemorial past and of the ages to follow ;
and that when hi the day of attainment we are
drawn within the veil of that sanctuary there is no
such thing as being alone in God. It is the Catholic
state of reunion. I have said somewhere else :
It is certain that human love finds its fruition in
Him, so only that it is pure and holy and real.

Yours ever,

A. E. WAITE.

INDEX

ALUNGHAM, William, 14.
Antonio a Spiritu Sancto, 278.
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 275.
Aristotle, 219.
Arnold, Matthew, 54, 181.
Augustine, St., 179-80.

' B. M.,' 217-18.

Barnes, William, 206.

Barry, Dr. William, n, 271-6.

Baxter, Richard, 212-13, 219,

254-5-

Beatrice Portinari, 78-80.
Bede, the Venerable, 222-3.
Benson, A. C., 66, 132.
Benson, Archbishop, 124, 132, 235.
Benson, Father, of Cowley, 158.
Bernard, St., 70, 95, 219-22.
Bonaventura, St., 108.
Bradley, A. C., 55, 58, 59, 61.
Brontes, the, 5, 6.
Bronte, Charlotte, 172-3.
Brooke, Dr. Stopford, 155-6, 166,

195-6, 226.
Brooks, Phillips, 41, 120, 153-4,

234-5-

Brown, Dr. John, 155, 215.
Brown, T. E., 197-8.
Browne, Sir Thomas, 112.
Browning, E. B., 25, 26, 128-9,

134, 135-8, 153, 168, 170-1,

202-4, 219, 237.
Browning, Robert, 21, 22, 24, 25,

57, 74, 75, 77, i74~5, 210.
Buckle, H. T., 15, 16.
Byron, Lady, 226.

CABLE, G. W., 139-40.
Camerarius, Joachim, 104-7.
Campbell, John Macleod, 116.
Carlyle, Thomas, 13, 14, 15, 79,

150-2, 161-2, 224.
Carroll, Dr., 92.
Chalmers, Dr., 121, 215-16,

230.

Church, Dean, 90.
Cicero, 271.
Clough, A. H., 54, 56.
Coverdale, Bishop, 245-6.
Cowper, William, 160, 249-50.
Craik, Dinah M., 257-9.
Crashaw, Richard, 178, 211.
Creighton, Bishop, 207-8.
Grossman, S., 211.
Cuthbert, Bishop, 222-3.
Cynewulf, 244.
Cyprian, 242-3.

DALE, R. W., 125, 162-3, 232-3.

Dale, Thomas, 162-3.

Dante, 78-96.

D'Arblay, Madame, 179.

Davidson, Thomas, 55, 212.

Deane, Canon, 67-70.

Dickens, Charles, 123.

Dobell, Sydney, 5-6.

Dods, Marcus, 73.

Dolben, D. M., 159-60.

Donne, John, no.

Drew, Canon, and Mrs., 196-7.

Drummond, Hon. Adelaide,

159-

Drummond, Henry, 76, in.
281

Z82

Reunion in Eternity

EAST-LAKE, Lady, in.
Eliot, George, 198-200.
Elizabethan Dramatists, the, 246-

8.
Emerson, R. W., 123, 161-2, 216-

17, 219.
Epicurus, 240.
Erskine, Thomas, of Linlathen,

230-1.
Ewing, Juliana Horatia, 157-8.

FAIRLESS, Michael, 161.
Faraday, Michael, no.
Forster, John, 224.
Foster, John, 149-50.
Foster, Sir Michael, 55.
Fry, Elizabeth, in. .
Fuller, Margaret, 216-17.

GILMOUR, James, of Mongolia,

204-5.

Gladstone, W. E., 254.
Godet, Dr. F., 229.
Goethe, 226.
Gratry, Pere, 239.
Gravina, Admiral, 214.
Greenwell, Dora, 62, 73, 237-8.
Greg, W. R., in, 253.
Gregory, Dean, 221.
Grenville, Sir Richard, 211.
Grote, Mrs., 209.

HERBERT, George, 71, 113, 183.
Hesketh, Lady, 249-50.
Hettinger, F., 94, 95.
Holland, H. Scott, 229.
Homer, 269.
Hooker, Thomas (a Pilgrim

Father), 248-9.
Hugo, Victor, 12.
Hutton, R. H., 231.
Huxley, T., 54, 55-

INGELOW, Jean, 128.

JEROME, 243-4.

Joinville, the Sieur de, 244.

KANT, Immanuel, 56, 57.
Keble, John, 163.
Ker, John, 115, 116, 165, 233-4.
King, Bishop Edward, of Lincoln,

217, 231-2.

King, Dr. Henry, 208-9.
Kingsley, Charles, 185-6.
Knight, Professor, 190.
Knox, John, 246.

LAMENNAIS, the Abbe de, 143-8.
Lentino, Jacopo da, 170.
Leo xui., Pope, 275.
Livingstone, David, 238.
Lockhart, J. G., 116, 259-60.
Longfellow, H. W., 201-2, 239.
Louis ix., 244-5.
Luther, Martin, 97-105.
Lyttelton, Alfred, 127, 188-9.
Lyttelton, Laura, 127, 128, 188-9.

MACCABAEUS, Judas, 215.

Macdonald, George, 140-2, 192-5,

218.

; Mackail, J. W., 197.
: Macleod, Norman, 115, 163-4, 225.

Markham, Edwin, 256-7.

Marston, Philip Bourke, 176-7,
205-6.

Martineau, Dr., 118, 119, 143,

190-1, 231.
! Massey, Gerald, 211.

Maurice, F. D., 120, 186-8.

Mazzini, Joseph, 13, 250-3.

Melanchthon, Philip, 97-108.

Meredith, George, 72, 200-1.

Mill, John Stuart, 23.

Milton, John, 213.

Moody, D. L., 122.

Moore, Dr., 81.

More, Sir Thomas, 223.

Moulton, Louise Chandler, 239.

Index

283

Mozley, J. B., 31.
Murchison, Sir Roderick, 238.
Muller, Max, 253-4.
Myers, F. W. H., 241-2.

NEWMAN, F. W., 231.
Newman, J. H., 154-5, 164.

OLIPHANT, Mrs., 51, 52, 138-9,
218.

Ozanam, Frederic, 148-9, 183.

PAGE, Dr. T. E., 269-72.
Paget, Bishop Francis, 228-9.
Peake, Professor Arthur S., 265-8.
Perreyve, Henri, 239.
Peter, St., of Alcantara, 214.
Plato, 270.
Plutarch, 240.
Porphyry, 240.
Pusey, E. B., 206-7.

READE, Charles, 117.
Redmond, Major William, 198.
Rolle, Richard, 278.
Rossetti, Christina, 171-2.
Rossetti, D. G., 173-4.
Ruskin, John, 152, 168-9, 182-3.
Rutherford, Samuel, 130.
Ruysbroeck, 277-8.

SAGE, Rev. Donald, 19, 20.
Scott, A. J., 143.
Scott, Sir Walter, 114.
Seneca, 271.

Shakespeare, William, 130.
Shairp, Principal, 225.
Shelley, P. B., 22, 54, 168.
Shirley, James, 166-7.
Smith, W. Robertson, 6, 9.

Smith, Thomas, 229.

Smith, William and Lucy, 209.

Sneath, Professor, 55, 58.

Socrates, 270.

Sophocles, 269.

Southey, Robert, 131.

Spenser, Edmund, 211.

Spurgeon, Dr. Caroline, 21.

Stanley, G. P., 215.

Stephen, Fitzjames, 23.

Stevenson, R. L., 236.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 133, 134,

156-7, 226-8.
Suger, Abbot, 219-22.
Swinburne, A. C., n, 12.

TAIT, Archbishop, 125, 126.
Talfourd, Thomas Noon, 175-6.
Taylor, Jeremy, 64.
Tennyson, Alfred, 54-70, no, 127,

178, 181, 223-4.
Teresa, St., 211, 214.
Toynbee, Dr. Paget, 93.
Trench, R. C., 120.

VAIL, Bishop, of Kansas, 235.
Vaughan, Henry, 260-1.
Victor, St., 220-2.
Victoria, Queen, 178, 223-4.
Virgil, 79, 272.

WAITE, A. E., 277-80.
Walton, Izaak, 113, 238.
Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 200.
Ward, Wilfrid, 54.
Wilkinson, Bishop G. H., 133, 154,

184-5, 235.
Wordsworth, William, 21, 81, 131,

132, 236.
Wyndham, George, 197.

Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press